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Talbot,  Neville  S.  1879- 
1943  . 

The  returning  tide  of  faith 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/returningtideoffOOtalb 


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THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


The  Returning  Tide 

of  Faith 


/BY 

NEVILLE  S.  TALBOT,  D.D.,  M.C. 

BISHOP  OF  PRETORIA 

SOMETIME  FELLOW  AND  CHAPLAIN  OF  BALLIOL  COLLEGE,  OXFORD 
AND  FORMERLY  ASSISTANT  CHAPLAIN-GENERAL 


New  York  Chicago 

Fleming  H,  Revell  Company 

London  and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1923,  by 

FLEMING  H.  REVELE  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  17  North  Wabash  Ave. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh :  75  Princes  Street 


CECIL  MARY 

EVER-BELOVED 


1 


"  We  looked  for  peace,  but  no  good  came;  and 
for  a  time  of  healing,  and  behold  dismay !  ” 

Jeremiah  xiv.  19. 

“He  that  hateth  his  brother  is  in  the  darkness, 
and  walketh  in  the  darkness,  and  knowetli  not 
whither  he  goeth,  because  the  darkness  hath 
blinded  his  eyes. 

“  He  that  loveth  not  knoweth  not  God;  for  God 
is  love. 

“He  that  abideth  in  love  abideth  in  God,  and 
God  abideth  in  him 

1  John  ii.  11,  iv.  8  and  16. 


/ 


\ 


Preface 


THIS  book  is  put  out  in  the  hope  that  it  may 
help  the  “  average  man  ”  in  the  vital  matters 
of  faith.  These  days  of  confused  thought 
and  disintegrating  tradition  afflict  him  severely. 
Of  ter — as  was  most  vividly  apparent  in  the  war — 
he  has  but  the  vaguest  notion  of  what  the  Christian 
Faith  is.  Often  he  is  the  helpless  victim  of  veri¬ 
table  caricature  of  that  Faith,  a  caricature  deriving 
from  deeply  wrong  conceptions  of  God.  Yet  with¬ 
out  a  robust  and  tested  faith  he  is  the  more  captive 
to  himself  and  to  his  passions,  the  more  easily 
swayed  by  the  lying  and  cruel  habits  of  our  semi- 
pagan  and  largely  Godless  civilisation.  He  cannot, 
as  so  many  of  our  race  have  done  in  the  past, 
merely  live  off  the  capital  of  inherited  instincts. 
For  that  capital  has  run  or  is  running  out.  He 
cannot — he  should  not — merely  swallow  old  tradi¬ 
tion  on  authority.  He  must  understand.  He  must 
understand  that  authority  bids  him  receive. 

The  “  average  man/’  in  his  misty-mindedness, 
stands  in  manifest  danger  of  being  exploited  by  one 
or  other  of  the  many  cults  and  religious  move¬ 
ments  which  have  sprung  up  like  weeds  all  the 
world  over,  not  least  in  South  Africa,  where  this 
book  has  been  written.  Some  of  them  are  of  the 
most  irrational  and  dangerously  emotional  kind. 
The  truth  is  that  we  live  in  a  time  of  the  recurrence 


11 


12  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


of  “  religion.”  And,  as  history  abundantly  proves, 
“  religion  ”  may  do  much  to  add  fuel  to  the  natural 
folly,  credulity  and  superstition  of  mankind.  The 
hopes  of  scientific  men  not  so  long  ago  (who  were 
jealous  for  the  rationality  of  the  race),  that  “  relig¬ 
ion  ”  would  be  outgrown,  were  not  wholly  unjusti¬ 
fied.  But  they  have  not  been  fulfilled.  The  floods 
of  “  religion  ”  have  over-topped  the  dykes,  which 
agnostic  science  threw  up  during  last  century  in 
order  to  reclaim  as  much  religious  swamp  as  it 
could.  Odd  as  it  will  seem  to  many,  it  is  clear  that 
the  Christian  Church,  if  she  knows  her  business, 
will  have  again  to  be  the  guardian  and  champion 
of  rationality  in  faith  in  the  face  of  irrationalism 
in  religion. 

I  wonder  whether  she  does  know  her  business  ? 
Is  she  ready  boldly  to  present  the  Faith  to  those 
who,  under  modern  conditions,  are  willing  to  think 
about  it  ?  Certainly  the  Church  of  the  Province  of 
South  Africa,  to  which  I  belong,  is  not  nearly  so 
well  developed  as  a  teaching  Church  as  she  is  as  the 
organizer  of  institutional  religion.  She  is  well 
developed  on  the  side  of  the  ministry  of  the  Sacra¬ 
ments.  She  needs  reinforcement  in  the  ministry  of 
the  Word.  The  whole  Church  needs  to  think  out 
her  message  again  fearlessly.  She  must  claim  the 
discriminating  inspiration  of  the  Holy  Spirit  that 
she  may  re-interpret  the  revelation,  of  which  she  is 
the  trustee.  This  involves  risks,  but  they  are  life- 
giving  risks.  To  refuse  to  take  them  means 

suicide.  The  Church  need  not  fear  for  the  truth. 

■ 

It  will  not  dissolve  in  the  process  of  being  thought 


PREFACE 


13 


through.  It  will  rather  be  renewed  in  power  for 
the  salvation  of  the  world. 

I  publish  this  rough-hewn  volume  because  its  con¬ 
tents  seem,  so  far  as  I  can  judge,  to  stand  the  severe 
strains  of  modernity.  If  that  is  true  the  credit  is 
not  mine.  It  is  due  to  some  of  the  greatly  brave 
men  in  the  last  generation.  If  any  credit  is  due,  I 
ascribe  it  with  unfading  gratitude  to  that  most  be- 
•  loved  master  of  theology,  Henry  Scott  Holland. 

Books  about  Christianity  abound,  and  yet  it  is 
wonderfully  hard  to  know  what  to  put  into  the 
hands  of  some  one  who  says,  “  I’m  in  a  muddle. 
What  shall  I  read?  ”  I  could  wish  that  this  book 
was  simpler  and  more  popular  than  it  is.  Yet  I 
dare  to  hope  that  it  may  meet  the  needs  of  some  of 
the  folk  who  are  troubled  or  confused  in  their  faith. 
For  the  substance  of  the  book  has  appeared,  in 
weekly  portions,  in  the  J ohcmnesburg  Rand  Daily 
Mail.  Johannesburg  is,  I  suppose,  not  famous  as 
either  a  producer  or  consumer  of  theology.  But  it 
is  an  encouraging  sign  of  the  times  that  one  of  its 
daily  journals  should  have  allowed  space  in  its  col¬ 
umns  for  theology.  I  should  not  have  published 
this  book  but  for  the  welcome  and  interest  with 
which  “  men  in  the  street  ”  in  South  Africa  re¬ 
ceived  those  theological  articles.  I  should  like  to 
add  that  in  putting  the  material  into  book  form  I 
have  adhered  to  my  original  purpose  of  not  treating 
of  controversial  subjects.  There  is  nothing,  there¬ 
fore,  in  this  book  on  the  great  and  primary  subject 
of  the  Sacraments. 

There  only  remafns  to  say  a  word  about  the  title 


14  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


of  the  book.  It  was  suggested  by  Matthew  Ar¬ 
nold's  “  Dover  Beach.” 

The  sea  of  faith 

Was  once,  too,  at  the  full,  and  round  earth’s  shore 
Lay  like  the  folds  of  a  bright  girdle  furl’d. 

But  now  I  only  hear 

Its  melancholy,  long,  withdrawing  roar, 

Retreating  to  the  breath 

Of  the  night  wind  down  the  vast  edges  drear 

And  naked  shingles  of  the  world. 

Such  was  the  verdict  of  the  Victorian  poet.  But 
the  ebb-tide  of  faith  has  turned.  The  Christian 
Faith  is  coming  again.  Such — despite  the  many 
disappointments  and  perplexities  of  to-day — is  my 
conviction.  I  long  to  share  it  with  such  men  as  I 
learned  to  love  and  admire  in  the  war.  To  them  I 
commend  these  pages  in  all  their  crudity.  I  pray 
that  they  may  help  many  to  the  truth,  and  that  the 
truth  may  make  them  free. 

NsvillS  S.  Talbot. 


Pretoria ,  Transvaal. 


Contents 


I.  What  of  the:  Night?  .  .  .17 


II.  The:  Plight  of  the:  Churches  .  22 

III.  The  Great  Question  .  .  .27 

IV.  The  Jew  to  the  Rescue  .  .  33 

V.  The  Religious  Expert  .  .  39 

VI.  The  Invincible  Optimist  .  .  45 

VII.  Behold  the  Man — I  .  .  .52 

VIII.  Behold  the  Man — II  .  .  .58 

IX.  The  Great  Refusal  .  .  .64 

X.  The  Crucial  Question  .  .71 

XI.  The  New  Creation  .  .  .77 

XII.  The  World  in  Chains  .  .  83 

XIII.  The  World  Set  Free  .  .  .  90 

XIV.  The  Good  News  .  .  .  .97 

XV.  What  Think  Ye  of  Christ?  .  103 

XVI.  God  and  Man  .  .  .  .110 

XVII.  Omnipotence — I  .  .  .116 

XVIII.  Omnipotence — II  .  .  .  121 

XIX.  The  Atonement — I  .  .  .  128 

XX.  The  Atonement — II  .  .  .  134 


15 


16 


CONTENTS 


XXL  The  Church:  Is  It  Necessary?  .  141 

XXII.  Christ  and  the  Church  .  .  147 

XXIII.  The  New  Israee  .  .  .  .153 

XXIV.  The  Second  Coming — I  .  .159 

XXV.  The  Second  Coming — II  .  .  165 

XXVI.  Liee  Here  and  Beyond  .  .172 

XXVII.  Liee  Aeter  Death  .  .  .178 

XXVIII.  Heee — I  .  .  .  .  .184 

XXIX.  Heee— II . 192 

XXX.  The  Virgin-Birth  .  .  .199 

XXXI.  The  Hoey  Trinity  .  .  .  205 

XXXII.  The  Gospee  and  Liee:  The 

Kingdom  oe  God  .  .  .212 


I 

WHAT  OF  THE  NIGHT? 

WATCHMAN,  what  of  the  night?” 

“  The  watchman  ” — irritating  old  fel¬ 
low! — “only  said,  ‘Though  the  morn¬ 
ing  will  come,  the  night  cometh  also/  ” 

His  discouraging  prophecy  seems  to  have  come 
true.  During  the  war  men  looked  for  peace  as  men 
in  fever  look  for  the  morning.  The  morning  did 
come,  but  it  was  quickly  succeeded  by  night.  Dark¬ 
ness  has  fallen  on  many  of  the  bright  hopes  con¬ 
ceived  during  the  war.  And  in  the  darkness  gloomy 
forebodings  are  heard.  “  Europe  is  rattling  into 
barbarism,”  says  one :  “  Europe  is  dying,”  says 
another.  And  cynics  are  making  hay  while  the 
sun  does  not  shine. 

Well,  if  things  are  dark,  let  us  look  into  the  dark 
and  face  the  facts.  It  is  madness  merely  to  try  to 
forget  or  neglect  them.  ’Ware  the  ostrich  habit. 
We  have  tried  that  too  often. 

The  first  thing  to  be  seen  yields  comfort.  Cold 
comfort,  perhaps,  yet  comfort.  It  is  the  fact  that 
if  after- war  days  were  not  difficult  and  perilous, 
things  would  be  worse  and  more  hopeless  than  they 
are.  For  if  war  could  bring  a  better  world  to  the 
birth,  then  war  would  be  a  blessing.  It  would  be 
creative.  But  it  is  not.  It  is  a  destructive  curse. 
We  did  not  see  this  while  the  fighting  was  on.  We 


17 


18  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


see  it  now  and  we  have  to  learn  the  lesson.  There 
may  be  worse  things  than  war,  but  that  does  not 
alter  the  fact  that  war  is  evil. 

The  second  thing  to  be  seen  is  that  we  must  make 
a  clean  cut  with  the  idea  that  the  troubles  of  the 
world  are  simply  to  be  put  clown  to  Germany.  That 
idea  was  good  enough  for  war-propaganda,  but  we 
know  now  that  it  simply  will  not  do. 

We  must  own  up  to  the  fact  Germany  had  no 
monopoly  in  the  ideal  of  national  self-interest.  She 
was  only  more  brutal,  unscrupulous  and  thorough¬ 
going  than  her  neighbours  in  attempting  to1  attain 
her  ideal.  The  truth  is  that  a  widely-spread  epi¬ 
demic  of  selfishness  came  to  its  crisis  in  the 
frantic  attempt  of  Germany  to  put  “  Deutschland 
iiber  alles.” 

The  same  disease,  in  less  violent  and  offensive 
form,  pervades  the  whole  of  modern  civilisation. 
Ask  any  man  of  business  in  his  candid  moments 
and  see  whether  he  does  not  admit  that  modern 
business  is  dominated  by  the  pursuit  of  self- 
interest.  The  Victorian  age  made  a  god  of  the  man 
who — in  Mr.  Kidd’s  phrase — was  “  efficient  in  the 
promotion  of  his  own  interest,”  and  we  have  come 
in  for  the  consequences,  Germany  brought  the 
competitive  individualism  of  a  century  to  a  head. 
Whether  in  the  market-place  or  in  international 
diplomacy  it  has  been  cut-throat  competition  which 
has  been  dominant  in  life.  True,  the  war  put  a 
moratorium  on  this  deadly  system  of  ideas.  The 
bright  lining  to  its  darkness  was  that,  with  ruthless 
insistence,  it  drew  men,  classes  and  interests  (less 


WHAT  OF  THE  NIGHT? 


19 


the  profiteers),  from  their  race  to  get  rich,  and  in- 
spanned  them  to  the  service  of  a  common  end.  But 
it  was  only  a  moratorium,  and  the  suspended  sys¬ 
tem  of  ideas  has  “  come  again.”  Many,  therefore, 
whether  nations  or  individuals,  who  were  drawn 
out  of  themselves  into>  co-operation  for  a  common 
purpose,  have  flown  apart  and  have  resumed  their 
old  pursuits. 

Now  there  is  not  enough  room  in  the  modem 
world  for  unbridled  competition.  And  this  is  the 
third  thing  to  which  we  must  attend.  The  world  is 
now  a  small  place.  In  the  course  of  two1  or  three 
generations  it  underwent  a  remarkable  process  of 
shrinkage.  Scientific  invention,  applied  to  means 
of  communication,  was  the  agent  in  the  process. 
The  result  is  that  the  world  is  a  small  neighbour¬ 
hood  to-day,  and  this  means  the  aggravation  of  the 
rubs  and  jars  which  occur  among  neighbours.  The 
simple  truth  is  that  mankind  has  not  adjusted  itself 
to  its  recently-narrowed  circumstances.  It  desires 
elbow-room  and  finds  th!e  same  curtailed.  No 
wonder  the  Kaiser  let  fly  that  phrase  about  “  a  place 
in  the  sun.”  It  expresses  the  desire  to  expand.  It 
implies  over-crowding.  Hence  the  growth  in  in¬ 
tensity  of  racial  and  national  jealousies  and  an¬ 
tagonisms.  If  one  listens  one  can  hear  doors 
banging  all  the  world  over,  as  nations  bar  each 
other  out.  America  excludes  Japan,  Australia 
excludes  China,  South  Africa  excludes  Asiatics 
(and  wishes  it  had  never  let  any  of  them  in),  and 
so  forth. 

Nor  is  there  any  sign  that  modern  civilisation  can 


20  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


make  peace  among  the  jostling  crowd  of  motley 
rivals  and  competitors  which  it  has  so  lately  knit 
together.  Its  great  instrument,  of  which  it  ex¬ 
pected  so  much,  namely,  education,  has  had  the  dis¬ 
concerting  effect  of  stimulating  national  ambition 
and  race-consciousness.  It  goes  like  wine  to  the 
head  of  younger  folk  among  “  native  ”  peoples.  It 
upsets  the  old  foundations  of  life  among  races  who 
are  at  many  levels  of  development.  It  produces 
unrest  all  over  the  globe. 

And  this  process  is  now  inevitable.  For  no 
human  power  can  hope  to  arrest  the  spread  of  ideas 
in  a  world  which  is  inseparably  one.  It  is  too  late. 
Why,  the  very  air  vibrates  with  wireless  messages 
overleaping  what  were  vast  distances.  The  world 
is  a  network  of  arteries.  Stop  the  circulation  of 
the  arterial  system  of  ships,  ocean  cables,  wireless 
stations,  railways,  aeroplanes,  newspapers,  books — 
and  the  world  in  its  different  parts  would  be  re¬ 
duced  to  starvation  and  anarchy. 

What  then?  We  see  the  problem.  The  war  as 
such  has  bettered  nothing.  The  ideas  which  pro- 
*  duced  the  war  are  still  current.  There  is  no  room 
for  unlimited  self-aggrandisement.  The  littleness 
and  oneness  of  the  world  geographically  are  acting 
as  irritants  to  minds  aroused  by  education. 

These  are  facts  to'  be  faced  and  understood. 
There  is  a  power  of  remedy  merely  in  understand¬ 
ing  the  problems  of  life.  Think  what  a  long  way 
the  understanding  of  the  facts  of  a  case  carries  a 
good  doctor.  It  means  that  he  is  half-way  towards 
dealing  with  the  case.  So  with  the  facts  to  which 


WHAT  OF  THE  NIGHT? 


21 


we  have  pointed.  Our  generation  is  faced  by  a 
more  difficult  problem  than  any  of  its  predecessors. 
It  is  the  aggravated  problem  of  how  all  kinds  of 
people  are  to  live  together.  We  shall  tackle  it  all 
the  better  if  we  understand  the  facts  underlying  it. 
This  will  be  far  more  profitable  than  the  indulgence 
either  in  mutual  recrimination  or  in  the  suggestion 
that  mankind  is  degenerate.  Some  would  have  us 
believe  that  the  present  generation  is  worse  than  its 
forbears.  History,  we  believe,  would  rebut  the 
charge  and  act  as  a  cordial  to  such  drooping  spirits. 
Very  recent  history,  moreover,  has  demonstrated 
that  reserves  of  unselfishness  lie  hidden  in  human 
nature.  Yet  the  understanding  of  facts  and  diffi¬ 
culties  will  not  go  all  the  way.  Things  are  not  so 
simple  as  all  that.  Least  of  all  human  nature.  Its 
problems  are  not  solved  by  being  understood.  Such 
understanding  will  make  plainer  than  ever  what  is 
the  supreme  need  of  men  and  nations.  It  is  the 
need  for  an  end  beyond  their  own  interests.  Some¬ 
thing  that  will  do  all  the  time  what  the  war  in  a 
measure  did  for  a  time.  Some  one  goal,  the  pur¬ 
suit  of  which  would  pull  the  world  together.  Does 
such  a  thing  exist?  We  seem  to  hear  a  familiar 
whisper — “  In  sua  voluntade  e  nostra  pace”  (In 
God’s  will  is  our  peace). 


/ 


II 

THE  PLIGHT  OF  TPIE  CHURCHES 

WHAT  can  unite  the  world? 

The  war  bound  a  big  part  of  the  world 
together  for  its  special  purposes.  But, 
since  the  Armistice,  those  who'  were  inspanned  by 
the  war  and  pulled  together  to  achieve  victory  have 
tended  to  outspan  and  return  to  their  former  rival¬ 
ries.  Now,  in  a  world  which,  thanks  to  science,  has 
been  greatly  reduced  in  size,  the  friction  of  compet¬ 
ing  individuals,  classes  and  nations  grows  inevi¬ 
tably  more  acute.  What,  then,  can  pull  them 
together  in  peace?  Is  there  a  common  object  for 
their  devotion  other  than  their  own  interests? 

“  Ideals/’  says  some  one — “  a  common  ideal,  for 
instance ;  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number.” 

That  sounds  all  right.  But  then,  ideals  are  dan¬ 
gerous  things.  It  is  ideals — German,  Bolshevist, 
and  so  forth — which  have  ravaged  or  are  ravaging 
the  world.  Men,  after  all,  are  the  makers  of  ideals. 
And  what  happens  is  that  ideals  get  coloured  by  the 
ambitions  and  discords  of  their  producers.  Presi¬ 
dent  Wilson  came  over  to  Europe:  as  an  idealist. 
But  his  ideals  simply  stuck  in  the  throat  of  M. 
Clemenceau.  It  is  true  of  ideals  that  “  one  man’s 
meat  is  another  man’s  poison.” 

Well,  if  ideals  are  not  likely  to  unite  mankind, 
we  come  back  to  the  question :  “  Is  there  some  one 


22 


f 


THE  PLIGHT  OF  THE  CHURCHES  23 

goal  the  pursuit  of  which  will  pull  the  world  to¬ 
gether?”  A  common  object  or  end;  something 
real,  not  ideal;  something  for  man,  not  made  by 
man — does  it  exist  ?  That  is  the  question. 

Now  this  is  a  theological  question.  That  sounds 
alarming.  But  it  is  useless  to  be  frightened  by 
mere  words.  And  the  fact  remains  that  the  clash 
of  men’s  interests  and  ideals  brings  up  the  great 
inquiry,  whether  or  no  the  peace  of  the  world  is  to 
be  found  in  God.  If  there  is  a  God,  then  (unless 
He  be  an  idol)  Fie  is  not  made  by  man  as  are  ideals. 
Rather  He  is  the  supreme  reality.  And,  if  He  has 
a  will,  there  would  be  the  focus  or  centre  for  human 
energies  in  all  their  rich  variety. 

Having  got  so  far,  we  naturally  turn  to  the 
Church.  We  have  reached  the  point  where  we  may 
expect  that  it  should  come  in  and  have  something 
to  say.  But  as  we  turn  to  the  Church  there  is  no 
denying  that  it  disappoints  us.  For,  first,  The 
Church  does  not  appear  to  exist,  only  a  bewildering 
number  of  Churches.  If  the  trouble  with  the 
world  is  discord,  it  seems  to  be  the  same  with  the 
Church. 

Religiously  the  world  is  as  divided  as  it  is  in  any 
other  respect.  And  this  is  true  as  regards  the 
Christian  religion,  let  alone  any  others,  Christian¬ 
ity  has  become  cut  up  in  accordance  with  the  secular 
divisions  of  mankind.  Nationality — to'  take  the 
most  glaring  example — has  used  the  resources  of 
Christianity  to  promote  its  own  ends.  Christianity 
of  a  sort  has  been  mixed  with  national  aspirations 
and  religious  ardour  has  inflamed  patriotism.  Ger- 


24  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


many,  as  usual,  has  been  the  most  thoroughgoing 
instance  of  this.  It  managed  to  hitch  nearly  all  the 
motive  power  of  Lutheranism  to  the  car  of  German 
ambition. 

But  there  are  other  instances  not  far  to  seek.  It 
is  so-called  Christian  passion  which  burns  and  flares 
in  the  hearts  of  men  on  either  side  of  the  fratricidal 
struggle  in  Ireland.  And  in  South  Africa  we  have 
our  own  object-lessons  near  to  hand.  The  British 
have  their  national  form  of  Christianity.  The 
Dutch,  perhaps  still  more,  have  theirs.  Political 
passions  here  are  aggravated  by  religious  animus. 
The  fact  that  men  of  both  races  are  alike  called  by 
the  Name  of  Christ  seems  to  afford  no  bond  of 
unity  between  them.  While  all  around  them  are 
masses  of  natives  who  are  ever  and  again  being 
tempted  to  make  some  kind  of  Christian  enthusiasm 
the  inspiration  of  native  racialism.  Such  a  divided 
Christianity  is  terribly  disappointing  in  face  of  a 
divided  world. 

Secondly,  the  Churches  are  disappointing  because 
so  much  of  their  religion  is  apparently  so  remote 
from  life.  Perhaps  that  is  one  reason  why  the 
Churches  have  allowed  their  Christianity  to  be 
exploited  by  nationalism  and  other  interests.  By 
being  employed  to  foment  national  and  racial  feel¬ 
ings  Christianity  has  at  any  rate  been  made  to  count 
in  human  affairs  here  on  earth.  Whereas,  other¬ 
wise,  it  appears  to  be  concerned  with  death  rather 
than  life,  with  another  world  rather  than  this 
world.  “  Pour  etre  un  Chretien,  il  faut  penser 
tou jours  a  la  mort  ”  (To  be  a  Christian  one  must 


THE  PLIGHT  OF  THE  CHURCHES  25 


for  ever  be  thinking  of  death).  So  says  a  Roman 
Catholic  devote  in  a  French  novel. 

On  the  other  hand  the  perusal  of  the  hymn-books 
of  the  Evangelical  Churches  would  lead  an  impar¬ 
tial  observer  to  believe  that  Christianity  was  chiefly 
an  elaborate  system  of  insurance  against  the  life  to 
come.  Nothing  was  more  striking  in  the  war  than 
the  currency  of  the  notion  that  Christianity  had  far 
more  to  do  with  death  than  life.  Nor  can  it  be 
denied  that  to  men  absorbed  in  modem  industrial¬ 
ism  and  enterprise  the  Christian  system  of  ideas 
seems  to  be  a  far-away  tale.  A  voice  from  Amer¬ 
ica  puts  it  brutally:  “Jesus  Christ  cuts  no  ice  in 
California.” 

Of  course,  it  takes  two  to  make  a  quarrel.  And 
it  is  only  fair  to  say  that  if  modern  “  business  ” 
feels  that  Christianity  is  remote  from  it,  it  is  itself 
partly  to  blame.  Indeed,  it  has  turned  its  back  on 
Christian  ethic  and  on  a  great  deal  of  common 
morality  too.  That  was  part  of  the  doctrine  of 
“  laissez  faire  ”  on  which  so  much  of  modern  civil¬ 
isation  since  the  industrial  revolution  was  reared. 
This  was  the  philosophy  which  claimed  the  right  to 
let  things  rip,  to  let  competition  decide  industrial 
conditions,  to  let  so-called  laws  of  supply  and  de¬ 
mand  operate  naturally,  and  so  forth.  But  that  is 
another  story. 

Anyhow,  as  we  look  to  Christianity  and  the 
Churches  things  seem  disappointing. 

Yet  it  is  useless  to  be  put  off  by  disappointment. 
We  must  be  out  to  face  the  facts.  The  need  of  the 
world  must  keep  us  to  the  task.  It  is  a  spiritual 


26  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


need.  That  is  the  plain  truth.  There  are  no  such 
things  as  merely  political  or  economic  or  material 
questions.  The  great  problems  of  our  day  can 
neither  be  stated  nor  solved  in  terms  of  money  only. 
There  are  problems  of  human  character.  For  man 
is  the  measure  of  every  problem  and  he  is  a  spirit¬ 
ual  animal.  And  if  this  is  so,  then  we  must  turn  to 
the  spiritual  authorities  and  swallow  our  disap¬ 
pointment  at  the  state  in  which  they  seem  to  be,  and 
press  in  on  them  and  rouse  them  to  help  us. 

Evidently  the  need  of  the  world  is  for  God.  That 
is  what  the  Churches  ought  to  tell  us  about.  Per¬ 
haps  they  have  been  so  busy  with  this,  that,  or  the 
other  that  they  have  forgotten  this  one  thing  need¬ 
ful.  Probably  they  have  come  to  take  God  for 
granted.  But  that  is  just  what  cannot  be  done  to¬ 
day.  It  is  belief  in  God  which  is  the  very  difficulty 
of  the  hour.  To  feel  more  or  less  religious  every 
now  and  then  is  comparatively  easy.  But  really  to 
believe  in  God  and  in  His  ordering  of  life  in  this 
strangely-tortured  world — that  is  the  rub. 

What  is  God?  What  is  His  character?  What  is 
Pie  doing  in  face  of  the  world’s  suffering  and  sin? 

“  Come,  padre,  what  is  God  like  ?  It  is  your 
job — you  ought  to  know  !  ” 

So  said  a  soldier  in  France.  He  was  the  spokes¬ 
man  for  a  multitude.  He  felt  something  of  the 
world’s  need.  And  he  turned  to  the  Church  with 
this  main  question.  It  is  a  truly  Christian  thing  to 
do.  For  was  it  not  said:  “  Ask  and  ye  shall  re¬ 
ceive,  seek  and  ye  shall  find  ”  ? 


Ill 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION 

THE  world  needs  a  centre  of  unity.  In  itself 
it  is  disastrously  like  a  big  dog-figlit.  There 
is  snuffling  and  barking  and  biting  all  over 
the  globe.  The  daily  tale  of  human  suffering  and 
misery  would  drive  us  all  mad  if  we  were  really 
sensitive  to  it  and  not  hardened  by  its  familiarity. 
But  we  are  sufficiently  aware  of  what  is  going  on 
to  turn  every  now  and  then  and  ask  the  great  ques¬ 
tion — What  is  God  doing? 

There  is  no<  doubt  that  that  is  the  main  religious 
result  of  the  war.  It  drove  through  all  the  easily 
comfortable  philosophies  and  made  multitudes  of 
people  feel  the  pain  of  the  riddle  of  the  world. 
Shoulders,  previously  unweighted,  felt  “  the  burden 
of  the  mystery  of  this  unintelligible  world.” 

That  was  certainly  true  of  war  days,  though 
doubtless  many  people  have  since  contrived  to  for¬ 
get.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  many  men  during  the 
war  were  too'  busy  to  pursue  the  questions  which 
they  knew  were  alive  in  their  minds.  It  is  good 
policy  for  a  soldier  to  suppress  thought  and  emo¬ 
tion.  The  historic  sergeant  was  right  when  he  said 
to  an  officer,  “  It  would  never  do,  sir,  to  let  the  men 
take  this  ’ere  war  seriously.” 

But  all  the  same  a  mass  of  perplexed  thought 
was  in  men’s  hearts  on  all  the  fronts.  And  prob- 


27 


28  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


ably  there  was  still  more  pain  locked  away  in  the 
hearts  of  folk  at  home.  And  now,  in  some  degree 
at  any  rate,  this  repressed  perplexity  of  mind  and 
pain  of  soul  have  been  finding  expression.  Many 
of  course,  whether  combatants  or  non-combatants, 
have  settled  down  and  are  jogging  along  again  and 
refuse  to  go  on  asking  the  questions  of  which  they 
felt  the  pressure  in  war-time.  But  that  means  that 
a  lot  of  folk  have  got  skeletons  in  the  cupboards  of 
their  minds.  The  doors  may  be  locked  and  their 
owners  very  likely  are  not  “  bothering.”  But  the 
skeletons  are  there. 

That  is  one  reason  why  the  good  folk,  clerical 
and  lay,  who  fondly  hoped  that  the  returned  soldier 
would  be  converted  by  the  war  and  come  home  and 
be  found  in  his  place  in  church,  were  greatly  disap¬ 
pointed.  An  effort  in  the  Diocese  of  London  to 
welcome  “  the  boys  ”  back  to  the  parish  churches, 
after  the  Armistice,  met  with  an  almost  wholesale 
lack  of  response.  The  truth  being  that  “  the  boys  ” 
had  been  in  hell  and,  oddly  enough,  hadn’t  learnt 
much  about  God  there.  The  truth  being  that  the 
war-experience  was  widely  destructive  of  faith,  at 
any  rate  of  that  which  passed  for  faith.  And  yet 
the  fact  that  great  questions  have  stirred  in  many 
a  mind — even  if  they  have  been  locked  away  again 
in  cupboards  of  forgetfulness — is  a  great  ground 
of  hope. 

For  it  is  faith  which  asks  questions — that  has 
generally  been  unrecognised.  Men  have  connected 
faith  not  so  much  with  candid  questioning  as  with 
the  credulous  acceptance  of  answers.  People  have 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION 


29 


been  encouraged  to  think  that  faith  should  be  care¬ 
fully  wrapped  in  cotton-wool  and  kept  cosily  re¬ 
moved  from  the  hard  knocks  of  real  life.  They 
have  been  taught  to  take  doses  of  faith  as  of  a 
drug  which  benumbs  the  mind.  Such  faith  is  not 
the  real  article,  but  a  counterfeit.  The  real  article 
is  more  truly  to  be  seen  alive  in  the  sincere  per¬ 
plexity  of  those  who  have  been  “  up  against  it.” 
The  man  who  sees  a  great  problem  and  feels  the 
pain  of  it  is  at  any  rate  not  indifferent.  He  is,  so 
far,  alive  in  his  mind  and  soul.  Certainly  more 
alive  than  those  who  munch  their  daily  meals  like 
cows  and  put  all  thinking  as  far  away  from,  them¬ 
selves  as  possible.  Certainly  more  alive  than  the 
fatalist  who  takes  everything  as  it  comes  and  asks 
no  questions. 

So  there  is  this  real  encouragement  to  be  set 
against  all  the  disillusionment  of  war-time  and 
after-war  days.  Namely  this,  that  perhaps  more 
widely  than  ever  before  in  history  there  is  enough 
faith  in  people’s  hearts  to  make  them  ask  the  ques¬ 
tion — Why? 

Why,  if  there  is  a  God,  is  His  world  as  it  is? 

An  admiral  once  retorted  to  a  parson’s  offer  of 
religious  advice,  “  Yes,  padre,  you  talk  about  relig¬ 
ion — but  what  I  say  is,  4  Cook  at  the  world !  ’ 
Why,  if  one  of  my  captains  kept  his  ship  in  the 
condition  in  which  the  Almighty  seems  to  keep 
the  world,  I’d  sack  him  in  a  week!  ” 

That  is  the  point.  If  there  is  a  God — Why? 

Now  here  we  have  reached  the  popular  expres¬ 
sion  of  thoughts  which  have  evolved  for  long  in  the 


30  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


minds  of  thinkers.  Indeed  the  sort  of  dismay, 
which  every  now  and  then  clouded  the  conscious¬ 
ness  of  soldiers  in  France,  is  a  very  old  thing. 
India,  for  instance,  has  felt  it  all  down  the  ages. 
Ever  and  again  it  has  despaired  of  belief  in  the 
goodness  of  God  owing  to  the  badness  of  the  world. 
It  has  been  driven  by  experience  to  find  dismal 
refuge  in  a  belief  in  Nothingness. 

The  Greeks  were  a  very  vital  people  and  great 
lovers  of  life.  But  all  the  more  are  their  beauti¬ 
fully-expressed  thoughts  and  poetry  tinged  by 
melancholy.  Their  greatest  thinker,  Plato,  had 
sorrowfully  to  own  himself  beaten  by  the  facts  of 
this  world.  In  his  great  philosophy  he  can  only 
say  that  this  actual  order  of  things  is  a  world  of 
shadows.  Goodness  and  truth  and  beauty  are  not 
here  but  elsewhere.  They  are  in  an  ideal  world — in 
heaven.  He  could  not  bring  together  the  actual  and 
the  ideal. 

And  latterly,  during  last  century,  this  pessimism 
has  been  very  rife.  Many  thinkers  during  the 
eighteenth  century  were  able  to  take  a  strangely 
rose-coloured  view  of  things.  They  held  that  the 
goodness  of  God,  the  great  Architect,  and  the 
benevolence  of  His  scheme  of  things  were  perfectly 
demonstrable.  But  all  through  last  century  great 
and  sensitive  minds  felt  very  differently.  It  is  too 
big  a  story  to  tell  fully  here.  But  anyone  can  see 
what  is  meant  if  he  turns  up  his  Tennyson.  He 
was  a  man  who  longed  to  think  the  best  of  God 
and  the  world.  He  was  naturally  fond  of  beauty 
and  rose-colour.  But  his  most  lasting  (because 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION 


31 


most  candid)  thought  is  that  which,  rises  out  of  his 
heart  as  wrung  by  the  problem  of  the  world’s  pain. 
His  greatest  language  is  not  that  of  his  almost 
matchless  lyrics,  but  that  of 

An  infant  crying  in  the  night, 

An  infant  crying  for  the  light 
And  with  no  language  but  a  cry. 

For  he  asks : 

Are  God  and  Nature  then  at  strife, 

That  Nature  lends  such  evil  dreams? 

So  careful  of  the  type  she  seems, 

So  careless  of  the  single  life; 

That  I,  considering  everywhere 
Her  secret  meaning  in  her  deeds, 

And  finding  that  of  fifty  seeds 
She  often  brings  but  one  to  bear, 

I  falter  where  I  firmly  trod, 

And  falling  with  my  weight  of  cares 
Upon  the  great  world’s  altar  stairs 
That  slope  through  darkness  up  to  God, 

I  stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  grope 
And  gather  dust  and  chaff,  and  call 
To  what  I  feel  is  Lord  of  all, 

And  faintly  trust  the  larger  hope. 

There’s  the  great  question  poignantly  put.  Be¬ 
hind  it  lies  the  invasion  of  eighteenth-century  and 
Early  Victorian  optimism  by  the  grim  influences  of 
Darwinism.  Huxley  put  the  same  thing  when  he 
said  that  so  far  from  Nature  being  the  divinely- 
ordered  ally  of  men’s  moral  ideals,  it  was  “  the 
headquarters  of  the  enemy.” 

And  this  is  the  sort  of  thing  which  the  thinkers 
have  felt  very  deeply.  It  has  given  them  what  the 


32  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


Germans  call  Weltschmerz;  which,  being  inter¬ 
preted,  means — an  acute  stomach-ache  about  things 
in  general.  Mr.  Wells  has  suffered  thus  often 
enough.  It  is  now  almost  epidemic. 

We  have  laid  bare  the  great  question — it  is  the 
question  of  God.  It  is  a  very  old  question,  asked 
by  the  ancients,  asked  recently  by  the  few,  now 
alive  in  the  minds  of  average  men. 

But  we  will  stick  to  it  that  there’s  hope  in  the 
mere  fact  that  it  is  so  alive. 


IV 

THE  JEW  TO  THE  RESCUE 


WHEN  great  questions  are  being  asked — and 
that  they  are  has  been  already  established 
in  these  chapters — there  is  no  doubt  about 
the  quarter  to  which  we  should  turn  for  help. 

It  is  to  the  Jew. 

This  will  seem  surprising  to  many.  “If  it  were 
a  matter  of  ‘  raising  the  wind  ’  ” — so  the  majority 
of  people  might  be  heard  to  mutter!  And  there  is 
no  doubt  that  the  modern  reputation  of  the  Jew  for 
money-making  and  money-lending  and  so  forth 
has,  in  the  common  estimation  of  men,  eclipsed  his 
ancient  significance. 

Yet  once  the  primary  problems  of  existence  are 
felt  to  be  urgent  by  any  sensitive  mind,  its  owner 
will  find  comrades  in  his  trouble  among  that  extra¬ 
ordinary  people,  the  record  of  whose  spiritual  ex¬ 
perience  is  to  be  found  in  the  Old  Testament. 
Among  all  the  peoples  who  have  produced  a  great 
literature,  the  Jews  are  first  in  seizing  and  stating 
the  fundamental  issues  of  life. 

Of  course  this  will  never  be  appreciated  by  any¬ 
one  who  allows  his  mind  to  lie  sno wed-under  by 
what  he  learnt  in  Divinity  lessons  at  school.  A 
great  number  of  people  have  been  fatally  familiar 
with  a  variegated  assortment  of  odds  and  ends  of 
s  Old  Testament  knowledge.  They  have  been  led  to 


33 


34  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


believe — or  to  think  that  they  ought  to  believe* — 
that  all  the  Scriptures  contain  strict  historical  truth 
and  that  all  the  characters  and  stories  in  Scripture 
are  edifying  and  exemplary.  Thus  they  have  been 
asked  to  accept  a  Sunday-school  version  of  Jacob 
who,  by  the  slimmest  of  dodges,  swindled  Esau  out 
of  his  birthright,  or  of  Jael,  the  wife  of  Heber  the 
Kenite,  driving  the  nail  through  the  temple  of  the 
confiding  and  sleeping  Sisera. 

So,  too,  they  have  thought  that  they  must  think 
of  God  as  delighted  with  the  massacre  of  Amale- 
kites — men,  women  and  children.  They  have 
thought  that  it  was  essential  to  a  Christian  to  be¬ 
lieve  that  the  world  was  made  by  God  in  six  suc¬ 
cessive  days.  They  have  a  confused  memory  of 
lists  of  kings  of  Israel  and  Judah — a  memory  col¬ 
oured  by  a  schoolboy’s  doubt  whether  he  could  ever 
satisfy  an  examiner  as  to  the  separate  individuality 
of  Joash,  Jehoash  and  Jehoahaz! 

Such  are  a  few  of  what  Carlyle  called  “  Jewish 
old  clothes,”  which  lie  about  in  the  minds  of  a  great 
number  of  people  as  in  a  very  second-hand  clothes 
shop.  It  is  by  no  means  an  exhaustive  list.  It  does 
not  include  the  marvellous  incidents  of  the  speech 
of  Balaam’s  ass,  of  Jonah’s  sojourn  in  the  whale, 
or  of  the  falling  flat  of  Jericho’s  walls  at  the  blow¬ 
ing  of  trumpets.  But  it  is  enough  to  account  for 
the  fact  that  the  Old  Testament  is  almost  the  last 
quarter  to  which  many  a  man  would  turn  for  en¬ 
lightenment  if  he  is  sincerely  concerned  with  the 
deep  things  of  life.  The  Old  Testament  has,  in 
fact,  been  overspread  in  the  common  estimation  of 


THE  JEW  TO  THE  RESCUE 


35 


men  by  a  thick  veil  of  boredom  and  incredulity.  It 
is  generally  and  widely  a  closed  book.  It  is  an 
element  in  school  experience  which  men  thankfully 
leave  behind  them  on  attaining  man’s  estate. 

Now  nothing  can  avail  here  but  a  radical  and 
ruthless  revision  of  beliefs  or  semi-beliefs  about  the 
Old  Testament.  Minds  must  be  swept  clear  of  de¬ 
posited  lumber.  Layers  of  accumulated  and  unim¬ 
portant  knowledge  must  be  blown  up  and  the  debris 
expelled  from  attention. 

There  has  too  often  been  a  conspiracy  of  silence 
on  this  whole  matter  among  teachers  of  religion. 
The  faith  of  generations  has  been  so  closely  inter¬ 
mixed  with  the  acceptance  of  the  dogma  of  the 
verbal  and  literal  inspiration  of  the  ancient  Scrip¬ 
tures,  that  preachers  have  hesitated  to  tell  their 
congregations  that  they  must  definitely  face  the 
task  of  leaving  that  dogma  behind.  This  hesitation 
and  fearfulness  has  had  widespread  and  fatal  ef¬ 
fects.  It  has  bred  the  belief  that  Christianity  is  in¬ 
compatible  with  intellectual  candour.  A  new  start 
must  be  made — new  to  a  great  mass  of  the  general 
public,  but  quite  familiar  to  those  who  have  given 
their  minds  to  the  modern  study  of  the  Bible.  It 
would  take  a  great  many  chapters  in  which  to  ex¬ 
pound  how  rightly  to  read  the  Old  Testament,  and 
in  so  doing  to  recover  hold  upon  its  quite  primary 
importance. 

But  one  or  two  things  can  be  stated  broadly. 

First,  in  the  place  of  the  dogma  of  inspired  writ¬ 
ings  there  must  be  substituted  the  recognition  of 
inspired  men.  God  never  wrote  a  book.  No  book 


36  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


was  ever  inspired.  He  wrote  upon  the  hearts  and 
minds  and  consciences  of  living  men.  The  accept¬ 
ance  of  so  many  bits  of  printed  truth  must  give 
way  to  the  understanding  of  a  people’s  continuous 
experience.  The  Bible  is  a  human  as  well  as  a 
divine  book. 

Secondly,  the  centre  of  gravity,  so  to  say,  in  the 
story  of  the  Jews’  experience  must  be  shifted  from 
its  earlier  to  its  later  stages.  And  this  for  several 
reasons.  The  story  of  Jewish  faith  is  the  story  of 
a  growth.  It  implies  a  process  of  development. 
And  in  all  growth  and  development  what  matters 
is  the  later  stages  and  not  the  earlier,  the  outcome 
and  not  the  origins,  no  matter  how  interesting  the 
latter  may  be.  And  in  the  case  of  Jewish  experi¬ 
ence  it  is  certain  that  the  stories  and  legends  of 
early  times  were  only  written  down  and  interpreted 
quite  late  in  the  history  of  the  race.  Some  of  the 
parts  of  the  Old  Testament,  which  appear  to  tell 
the  history  of  the  beginnings  of  things,  consist  of 
folklore,  inherited  by  the  Jews  in  common  with 
other  Semitic  tribes,  but  used  by  them  to  be  the 
medium  for  expressing  the  great  truths  about  God, 
man  and  the  world,  which  they  had  been  taught  in 
the  long  school  of  historical  experience.  This  is 
best  seen  in  regard  to  the  early  chapters  of  Genesis. 
The  material  in  them  is  derived  from  legend  which 
belonged  to'  the  family  of  peoples  of  which  the 
Jews  were  a  part.  It  has  no  claim  whatever  to  be 
scientific  history.  But  it  was  wonderfully  em¬ 
ployed,  adapted  and  expurgated  by  Jewish  teachers, 
during  or  after  the  exile  in  the  sixth  and  following 


THE  JEW  TO  THE  RESCUE 


37 


centuries,  for  the  purpose  of  conveying  the  con¬ 
clusions  to  which  life  had  brought  them — about 
God  as  the  One  creative  spiritual  reality,  beside 
whom  all  the  idols  of  Babylon  were  as  nought; 
about  the  world  as  in  itself  good  though  marred  by 
evil ;  about  man,  as  made  for  God,  but  nevertheless, 
in  fact,  devoted  to  himself.  To  be  still  more  spe¬ 
cific,  the  story  of  the  Fall  has  no  claim  whatever  to 
be  a  true  account  of  what  happened  once  upon  a 
time,  but  it  is  the  verdict  of  the  Jewish  conscience 
on  life.  The  Jew  found  himself  at  war  with  him¬ 
self,  in  an  unnatural  condition  of  internal  discord, 
made  for  God  and  for  goodness,  but  in  fact  and  in 
present  experience  perpetually  falling  from  his  true 
estate.  The  priestly  writer  who  edited  the  story  of 
the  Fall  made  it  the  vehicle  of  the  most  penetrating 
comment  on  actual  experience.  It  is  psycholog¬ 
ically  perfect.  It  is  daily  verified  by  every  mother's 
son  alive. 

Thirdly,  we  must  go>  to  the  Jew  for  his  interpre¬ 
tation  of  history.  If  anyone  begins  again  with  his 
Old  Testament  reading  and — skipping  the  earlier 
stories — makes  a  start  at  the  eighth  century  B.C., 
when  Amos  and  the  first  Isaiah  were  facing  the 
political  and  social  conditions  of  their  day,  he  will 
find  himself  in  a  quite  modern  world  of  interna¬ 
tional  politics.  It  is  a  world  of  great  empires,  sur¬ 
rounding  the  little  hill-peoples  of  Jerusalem  and 
Samaria — Egypt  on  the  one  hand,  Assyria  on  the 
other,  of  which  the  histories  are  now  known  to  go 
back  for  thousands  of  years  before  the  time  of 
Amos.  Amos  and  his  contemporaries  are  in  the 


38  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


full  glare  of  historical  times.  He  deals  with  a 
world  and  its  issues  recognisably  the  same  as  ours. 
He  and  his  fellow-teachers  and  their  people  are  in 
possession  of  a  faith — a  certain  way  of  interpreting 
life.  It  doesn’t  matter,  relatively  speaking,  where 
that  faith  came  from.  Its  origins  as  a  matter  of 
fact  are  veiled  by  the  mists  of  antiquity.  But  there 
is  was,  a  spiritual  activity  alive  in  the  hearts  of 
men.  Not  something  securely  written  down  and 
infallibly  certain,  but  something  in  process  of  being 
made,  as  steel  is  made  in  a  furnace.  For  this  faith 
was  in  the  hearts  of  men  who  were  “  up  against  it.” 
They  felt  to  the  quick  of  their  hearts  the  brutality 
and  contrariety  of  life  and  its  actualities.  And  they 
let  us  know  in  a  matchless  literature  what  they 
thought  and  wondered  and  questioned.  They  faced 
reality  with  a  sensitive  and  living  faith  in  God. 

Hence  out  of  their  hearts  there  came  the  most 
piercing  cries  of  faith  mingled  with  doubt,  of  long¬ 
ing  threatened  by  despair.  They  asked  all  the 
questions. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EXPERT 


AS  soon  as  ever  great  questions  are  stirring 
the  Jew  comes  to  his  own.  That  is,  the  Jew 
whose  sensitive  heart  beats  through  the 
pages  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  Jew  of  more 
recent  times,  it  must  be  admitted,  has  been  for  the 
most  part  engaged  in  other  lines  of  business  than 
that  of  raising  the  fundamental  questions  about 
God,  about  man  and  the  world ! 

But  it  was  not  always  so.  He  used  to  be  the 
expert  in  religious  faith.  Other  nations  are  expert 
in  other  things.  If  it  was  philosophy,  or  the  drama, 
or  sculpture — to  enumerate  no  more  subjects — that 
were  under  discussion,  it  would  still  be  right  to 
turn  to  the  Greeks  for  expert  advice.  If  it  was 
civil  government  the  Roman  would  rightly  claim 
an  audience.  If  it  was  scientific  industrial  organ¬ 
isation  the  German  or  the  American  would  be  called 
in.  And  so  forth.  But  if  it  is  a  question  of  relig¬ 
ious  faith  then  it  is  the  Jew’s  turn  to  speak. 

This  is  true  not  just  on  grounds  of  authority, 
that  is,  not  just  on  the  assumption  that  the  Jewish 
scriptures  are  sacred  and  inspired  writings.  It  is 
true,  because  in  an  almost  infinitely  long  competi¬ 
tion  the  Jew  came  out  first.  For  behind  the  Jewish 
literature  there  lie  many  ages  of  spiritual  develop¬ 
ment.  The  Jews  who  still  speak  to  the  world 


39 


40  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


through  the  Psalms,  for  instance,  are  the  fittest  who 
survived  in  a  process  of  religious  evolution,  the 
beginnings  of  which  lie  hidden  by  the  mists  which 
hang  over  the  early  stages  in  man’s  infinitely  long 
story. 

The  Jews,  out  of  whose  hearts  and  minds  came 
the  great  literature,  must  be  set  against  a  deep 
background  of  other  races  akin  to  them  in  blood 
and  tradition.  There  must  be,  indeed,  no  hesitation 
whatever  in  accepting  the  contention  of  the  students 
of  comparative  religion,  that  the  Jews  were  only  a 
small  part  of  a  wider  family  of  peoples,  and  that 
therefore  many  likenesses  and  parallelisms  in  cul¬ 
ture  and  tradition  are  to  be  found  among  the 
peoples  who  surrounded  them. 

At  one  time  it  seemed  to  be  thought  that  all  was 
lost  if  the  story  of  the  Creation  or  the  Flood  was 
found  among  the  traditions  of  other  peoples.  But 
this  was  pious  panic.  And  the  truth  is  that  the 
research  which  has  shown  that  the  Jews  are  only 
one  branch  on  a  great  parent  tree,  or  that  there  are 
many  points  of  similarity  between  them  and  other 
peoples,  has  but  served  to  throw  into  greater  relief 
the  uniqueness  and  significance  of  this  one  little 
people.  The  greater  the  number  of  competitors  in 
a  race,  the  greater  the  honour  of  the  winner. 

The  Jews  came  to  the  front  out  of  a  “  ruck  ”  of 
other  competitors.  They  have  their  roots — to  vary 
the  metaphor — in  a  soil  of  Semitic  culture  which 
grew  many  other  peoples.  But  they  are  the  finest 
flower  in  the  garden.  Doubtless  they  were  inti¬ 
mately  linked  in  origin  and  common  culture  with 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EXPERT 


41 


the  whole  family  of  peoples  who  for  unnumbered 
generations  lived  in  Mesopotamia.  Doubtless,  too, 
they  have  many  affinities  with  their  neighbours  in 
Canaan  and  Syria.  It  is  perfectly  needless  to  deny 
it.  Rather  it  is  something  to  be  eagerly  welcomed. 
For  those  surrounding  peoples  are  losers  in  the 
race.  They  are  now,  as  Kipling  would  say,  “  one 
with  Nineveh  and  Tyre.”  The  fact  that  they  have 
any  place  at  all  in  history  is  largely  due  to  the  cir¬ 
cumstance  that  they  had  some  connection  with  the 
despised  little  tribe  which  occupied  the  uplands  of 
Palestine. 

The  laugh,  so  to  say,  is  with  the  Jew.  The  laurel 
is  on  his  brow.  He  is  first  home,  at  long  last,  in  a 
race  competed  in  by  all  nations,  the  beginnings  of 
which  are  lost  in  the  blue  distance  of  time.  It  came 
to*  pass  (it  was  not  only  written  down  in  Scripture) 
that  “  ten  men  shall  take  hold,  out  of  all  the  lan¬ 
guages  of  the  nations,  shall  even  take  hold  of  the 
skirt  of  him  that  is  a  Jew,  saying,  ‘  We  will  go  with 
you,  for  we  have  heard  that  God  is  with  you  *  ” 
(Zechariah  viii.  23).  That  is  verified  whenever 
anyone,  whether  in  the  exaltation  of  faith  or  in  the 
ardour  of  praise,  or  in  the  dark  mood  of  doubt, 
finds  the  perfect  expression  of  that  which  is  in  his 
heart  in  some  part  or  other  of  the  Old  Testament. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  need  for  “  protection  ” 
for  those  writings.  For  the  final  expression  of 
simple  and  fervent  trust  in  God  “  the  last  word  ”  is 
with  Psalm  xxiii.  For  incisive,  dramatic  and  pas¬ 
sionate  discussion  of  the  hoary  and  ever-present 
problem  of  innocent  suffering,  there  is  nothing  bet- 


42  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


ter  in  the  whole  world’s  literature  than  the  Book  of 
Job.  For  the  candid  statement  of  the  cynic’s 
scepticism  about  progress  and  the  worth  of  life,  the 
Book  of  the  Preacher  (Ecclesiastes)  need  not  fear 
the  rivalry  of  Fitzgerald’s  Omar  Khayyam  or  of 
any  other  competitor. 

Nor  is  there  any  need  whatever  to  whitewash  the 
savageries  or  immoralities  to  be  found  in  the  Old 
Testament.  There  are  many  traces  in  its  books  of 
crude  and  cruel  notions  of  God  and  of  superstitious 
and  primitive  religion.  They  are  part  of  the  story 
of  a  people’s  earlier  development.  It  is  not  open  to 
question,  except  by  those  who  are  too  apathetic  to 
question  anything,  that  no  bloodier  old  ruffian  than 
Jehu  is  to  be  found  in  all  history.  For  slim  and 
fanatical  cruelty  you  can  hardly  better  Jael,  as  she 
drives  the  nail  through  the  temple  of  the  sleeping 
Sisera.  So,  again,  it  is  undeniable  that  Jewish 
prophecy,  which  to  this  day  is  an  unrivalled  com¬ 
mentary  on  social  iniquity,  and  breathes  the  atmos¬ 
phere  of  purest  moral  passion,  has  its  roots  in  quite 
characteristically  primitive  fortune-telling — see  the 
story  of  Saul  and  his  asses. 

But  the  point  of  all  this — surely  a  point  which 
“  sticks  out  ”  a  long  way — is  the  outcome  of  these 
crude  beginnings.  It  is  the  end  of  a  development 
which  matters  most.  It  is  the  fruit  or  blossom 
rather  than  the  bulb,  the  man  rather  than  the  child. 
Hence  the  importance  of  listening  to  the  voices  of 
those  prophetic  teachers  who,  from  the  standpoint 
of  faith  in  a  righteous  God,  wrestled  with  the  hard 
facts  of  a  world  dominated  by  the  Macht-politik 


THE  RELIGIOUS  EXPERT 


43 


(Might  is  Right)  of  Egyptian  kings  and  Assyrian 
sultans.  Hence,  too,  the  privilege  for  us  of  having 
a  mind  attuned  to  all  the  rich  discords  of  faith  and 
doubt,  confidence  and  dismay,  innocence  and  guilt 
which  are  the  outpourings  of  human  hearts  in  the 
Psalms, 

These  men  had  a  past  behind  them  of  which  they 
were  aware;  they  were  mouthpieces  of  an  intense 
national  consciousness ;  they  shared  with  their  for¬ 
bears  the  belief  that  they  had  been  called  by  An¬ 
other  to  a  great  destiny ;  they  had  a  sense  of  being 
instruments  in  the  creative  hands  of  God.  But  the 
thing  to  attend  to  in  what  they  say  is  not  what  they 
report  of  the  past  history  of  their  nation,  but  the 
way  in  which,  as  possessed  of  a  faith  in  the  God 
of  righteousness  they  grapple  with  the  events  of 
their  own  day.  It  is  this  that  is  fascinating  to  trace 
from  the  eighth  century  onwards.  The  history  of 
those  times  is  secure;  the  secular  historians  have 
dug  it  up.  Sargon,  Sennacherib,  Cyrus,  and  all  the 
rest  of  the  great  kaisers,  their  politics,  their  cam¬ 
paigns — there  is,  relatively  speaking,  no-  antiquity 
about  them.  They  are  fellow-citizens  with  us  in 
the  modern  world,  even  though  they  were  without 
cars,  wireless,  big  guns  or  poison  gas,  and  even 
though  they  thought  the  world  was  flat.  Their 
history,  we  repeat,  is  known. 

But  what  has  been  overlooked  by  a  great  deal  of 
Christian  tradition,  what  has  been  obscured  by  an 
unhistorical  preoccupation  with  the  stories  of  cre¬ 
ation  and  the  patriarchs,  what  has  been  buried  by 
literalism — is  the  comment  upon  the  history,  the 


44  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


interpretation  of  its  brutal  facts,  which  were  made 
by  the  men  of  Israel  from  the  point  of  view  of  their 
national  religion.  That  is  the  clue  to  Amos  and  the 
first  Isaiah,  to  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel.  They  and 
their  faith  in  God  were  ground  as  grain  between 
the  millstones  of  the  facts  of  history.  And  along 
with  them  and  with  their  successors  were  nameless 
others;  some  of  them,  whose  Psalms  we  inherit, 
eager  passionate  souls,  jealous  for  God;  some  of 
them  more  philosophic  men,  writers  of  what  is 
known  as  “  wisdom  ”  literature,  thinkers,  apolo¬ 
gists,  doubters,  wrestlers  with  the  riddle  of  life. 

These  are  the  men  to  whom  to  listen.  They  meet 
our  need  to-day.  They  anticipate  our  questions  and 
perplexity.  They  say  to  us,  as  it  were :  “  Ah,  you 
are  feeling  like  that — that  is  just  what  we  felt.” 
In  the  great  matters  of  faith  they  were,  in  a  word, 
the  experts. 


VI 

THE  INVINCIBLE  OPTIMIST 


THE  point  of  the  two  preceding  chapters  has 
been  to  open  up  the  region  which  lies  behind 
Christ. 

That  is  quite  essential  for  a  vivid  appreciation 
of  the  good  news  which  was  given  to  the  world  in 
Him.  Otherwise  it  is  very  likely  that  men  will  fail 
to  see  that  the  news  was  really  good,  despite  all  the 
talk  about  it.  Christ  is  the  answer  of  God  to  the 
great  questions  about  Himself.  The  answer  will 
seem  unimportant  if  the  urgency  and  greatness  of 
the  questions  are  not  appreciated.  The  light  of  the 
Gospel  will  not  be  gladdening  and  marvellous  to 
those  who  have  not  felt  nor  groped  in  the  darkness 
in  which  it  shone. 

Hence  the  tragedy  that,  thanks  to  much  of  tra¬ 
ditional  teaching  and  the  confused  and  strange  im¬ 
pressions  which  it  has  bred  in  most  people’s  minds, 
the  Old  Testament  has  come  to  be  widely  thought 
of  as  repellent  and  unintelligible.  Hence,  there¬ 
fore,  the  need  of  a  certain  violence  in  opening  doors 
which  have  been  barred,  so  that  men  may  enter 
again,  as  it  were,  into  what  had  become  a  deserted 
city,  and,  once  inside,  enjoy  the  freedom  of  that 
city.  That  means,  as  we  have  seen,  a  resolute 
departure  from  literalism  or  the  belief  in  infallibly 
accurate  documents;  a  getting  to  grips  with  the 


45 


46  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


men  behind  the  documents,  and,  by  so  doing,  a 
coming  face  to  face  again  with  the  living  God  who, 
down  the  long  ages,  dealt  with  those  men  and  re¬ 
vealed  Himself  to  them. 

For  that  is  the  vital  truth,  wonderfully  re-estab¬ 
lished  by  modern  Biblical  study,  namely,  that  in 
taking  hold  of  the  Jew,  we  take  hold  of  God  at 
work  through  the  Jew.  Modern  research  has  re¬ 
established  that  truth  partly  by  dint  of  first  putting 
it  aside.  Students  have  tried  to  unravel  a  purely 
human  story.  They  have  assumed,  for  instance, 
that  Abraham  was  only  an  ordinary  Semitic  sheikh, 
or  that  the  cult  of  Jehovah  was  on  all  fours  with 
the  tribal  cults,  of  peoples  who  were  neighbours  to 
the  Jews.  But  such  assumptions  have  proved  in¬ 
adequate.  They  are  too  thin  or  narrow  for  the 
facts.  To  treat  Abraham  as  an  ordinary  sheikh 
certainly  serves  to  liberate  him  in  our  minds  from 
the  unreal  conventions  of  ecclesiastical  art  and 
imagery.  But  the  result  of  so  doing  is  to  demon¬ 
strate  what  an  extraordinary  sheikh  he  was.  To 
treat  the  cult  of  Jehovah  as  merely  on  a  level  with 
other  cults  is  to  be  brought  face  to  face  with  the 
fact  that,  while  they  have  disappeared,  it  has  sur¬ 
vived.  To  treat  the  Creation-story  in  Genesis  as 
purely  on  all  fours  with  Babylonian  folklore,  is  to 
find  that  the  latter  is  tainted  with  bestiality,  while 
the  former  is  crystal-pure. 

And  so  on  all  down  the  long  story.  The  idea 
that  there  is  nothing  in  the  Jew  but  certain  theories 
which  he  evolved  out  of  his  inner  consciousness  will 
not  work.  Not  that  it  has  not  been  enlightening  to 


THE  INVINCIBLE  OPTIMIST 


47 


get  inside  the  Jewish  consciousness  and  see  it 
wrestling  with  problems  of  faith.  For  the  human 
element  in  the  Jew’s  development  has  been  thrust 
into  the  background  by  an  exaggerated  notion  of 
inspiration,  according  to  which  God  has  been 
thought  of  as  dictating  a  book.  But  that  does  not 
mean  that  they  are  only  and  merely  human  ele¬ 
ments  in  the  story.  That  is  simply  an  explanation 
which  fails  to  explain. 

And  the  only  satisfying  explanation  about  this 
little  and,  by  all  secular  estimates,  utterly  insignifi¬ 
cant  tribe1 — so  closely  linked  with  other  tribes,  so 
akin  to  and  so  nearly  submerged  by  surrounding 
peoples — is  that  tribe’s  own  persistent  declaration 
that  God  had  chosen  them,  called  them,  and  was  at 
work  in  them.  God  to  the  Jew,  as  the  prophets 
most  clearly  show,  was  not  the  conclusion  of  a  pre¬ 
carious  human  argument  but  a  living  reality  over 
against  them,  calling  them,  speaking  to  them,  at 
work  upon  them.  Only,  that  does  not  mean  that 
there  was  no  coming  to  conclusions  on  the  part  of 
the  Jew,  as  though  he  played  a  purely  passive  part 
in  the  business — was,  as  it  were,  merely  a  pipe 
down  which  God  spoke.  But  it  does  mean  that  he 
came  to  the  conclusion,  and  came  to  it  ever  and 
again  and  often  after  losing  hold  upon  it,  that  God 
was  not  an  idol — the  pathetic  creation  of  men’s 
minds — but  the  one,  the  only  creative  Spirit  mani¬ 
festing  Himself  in  nature  and  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  and  in  the  purpose  for  which  He  laid  hold  of 
Israel  as  a  people. 

That  is  the  conviction  which  rings  with  an  in- 


48  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


creasingly  certain  sound  through  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment.  That  is  the  faith  of  the  Jew. 

It  is  no  man-made  theory,  but  the  truth  which 
again  and  again  made  its  way  home  upon  the  con¬ 
sciousness  of  that  people.  Particularly  did  it  come 
home  afresh  and  was  verified  anew  in  exile.  Cheek 
by  jowl  in  Babylon  with  the  insolence  of  imperial 
power  and  a  monstrous  array  of  idols  carried  about 
and  made  a  burden  to  weary  beasts,  the  Jew  learned 
again — the  truth  got  right  home  upon  his  mind 
and  soul — that  there  was  one  God  and  beside  Him 
none  else,  “  that  He  had  made  and  would  bear, 
yea  He  would  carry  and  would  deliver”  (Isaiah 
xlvi :  1-4) . 

This  is  the  faith — the  monotheistic  faith — which 
lies  behind  Christ,  without  the  appreciation  of 
which  He  is  hardly  intelligible.  Thus  we  come  up 
to  Him  and  approach  the  centre.  It  is  a  mistake  to 
try  to  begin  with  Him.  He  comes  very  late  into 
the  infinitely  long  story  of  man.  He  is  the  climax 
of  the  purpose,  which,  while  embracing  the  whole 
world,  was  gripped  and  passionately  embraced  by 
one  people.  The  first  beginnings  and  early  stages 
of  that  which  rose  to  climax  in  Christ,  lie  covered 
by  the  impenetrable  haze  of  antiquity.  It  is  folly 
to  think  that  this  is  not  so.  It  is  wise  to  be  reso¬ 
lutely  agnostic  about  the  prehistoric.  But  the  later 
stages  are  ablaze  with  the  light  of  history.  It  is 
essential  to  appreciate  them  and  to  use  them  as 
signposts  and  milestones  on  the  road  which  leads 
up  to  Christ. 

We  come  therefore  to  the  New  Testament.  But 


THE  INVINCIBLE  OPTIMIST 


49 


before  we  leave  the  Old  Testament  we  will  note 
again  that  the  very  faith  in  the  One  God,  as  cre¬ 
atively  or  actively  at  work  in  His  world  and  in  His 
particular  people,  was  itself  the  source  of  passion¬ 
ate  perplexity  at  the  godlessness  and  confusion  and 
guilt  and  pain  of  life.  The  more  a  Jew  had 
heard  with  his  ears  and  his  fathers  had  told  him 
“  the  noble  works  that  God  had  done  in  their 
days  and  in  the  old  time  before  them/’  the  more 
dismayed  was  he  in  the  present  that  God  was 
apparently  doing  nothing.  Hence  the  bold  and 
clamouring  protests  which  abound  in  the  Psalms. 
Why  is  God  absent?  Why  has  He  forsaken 
us?  What  is  He  doing?  Why,  if  it  is  God’s 
world,  is  the  earth  full  of  darkness  and  cruel 
habitations  ? 

Thus  the  Jew  tussled  with  the  problem  of  how  to 
reconcile  a  righteous  God  with  the  facts  of  experi¬ 
ence,  the  ideal  with  the  actual.  He  never  solved 
the  problem  but  he  made  many  attempts.  It  is 
worth  while  attending  to'  this  because:  a  wrong  use 
has  been  made  in  Christian  tradition  of  his  only 
partial  solutions.  He  tried,  for  instance,  to-  solve 
the  problem  by  saying  that  all  suffering  was  penal, 
that  it  was  inflicted  by  God  on  the  wicked  and  that 
the  righteous  would  be  immune. 

Too  much  of  this  idea,  though  definitely  repudi¬ 
ated  by  Christ,  has  passed  into  Christian  tradition. 
The  Anglican  Prayer  Book  service  for  the  visita¬ 
tion  of  the  sick  is  tinged  by  it.  There  is  truth  in 
the  notion,  but  not  the  whole  truth.  It  doesn’t 
cover  the  facts.  The  wicked  do  not  always  suffer ; 


50  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


many  good  people  are  not  immune  from  suffering. 
The  Jew  saw  the  insufficiency  of  this  solution  of 
the  problem  and  said  so  with  great  intensity  of 
feeling.  We  have  in  the  Book  of  Job  not  only  a 
statement  of  the  problems  of  innocent  suffering, 
but  also  a  most  vigorous  repudiation  of  the  insuf¬ 
ficient  explanations — the  conventionally  pious  ex¬ 
planations — proffered  by  “  Job’s  comforters.” 

Another  attempted  solution  was  to-  say  that  suf¬ 
fering  was  good  for  people — that  it  was  good  for  a 
man  to  have  been  in  trouble.  There  is  much  to  be 
said  to  support  this  contention.  Character  is  made 
by  being  tested.  The  storms  of  life  make  great 
mariners.  But  it  doesn’t  cover  all  the  facts.  There 
is  much  useless,  wasteful  and  barren  suffering  and 
misery  in  life.  Many  victims  of  accidents  and  dis¬ 
aster  are  maimed  and  embittered  thereby  in  body 
and  soul. 

The  deepest  solution  of  the  problem  to  be  found 
in  the  mind  of  any  Jew  lies  in  the  recognition  of 
the  wonderful  power  of  self-sacrificing  love,  if  it 
suffers  voluntarily,  to  transform  suffering  from 
within,  and  make  it  declare  the  strength  of  the  love 
which  suffers.  But  this  great  and  glorious  truth 
is  found  in  only  one  passage  (Isaiah  liii.),  and  it  is 
probably  true  to  say  that  the  other  solutions  had  a 
voider  currency. 

Such,  then,  is  the  Jew,  the  man  of  unique  faith 
and  therefore  of  most  passionate  doubt.  He  found 
no  full  answer  to  his  questions.  But  he  held  on 
with  an  undying  patience.  He  is  the  invincible 
optimist  (Schopenhauer,  the  dismal  German  pessi- 


THE  INVINCIBLE  OPTIMIST 


51 


mist,  called  him  “  the  intolerable  optimist”),  hop¬ 
ing,  waiting,  looking  for  the  dawn,  because  of  his 
faith  in  God.  Rightly  we  take  hold  of  him,  for 
God  was  with  him. 


VII 

BEHOLD  THE  MAN— I 


HAVING  explored  the  story  of  the  faith 
(with  its  unsolved  problems)  which  lies 
behind  Christ,  we  come  to  Him.  Having 
opened  up  the  Old  Testament,  we  pass  to  the  New. 

It  is  essential  to>  pass  to  the  New  Testament  and 
its  central  Figure  by  way  of  the  Old  Testament, 
and  for  this  reason — that  Christ  entirely  and  un¬ 
reservedly  assumed  that  there  was  a  faith  alive  in 
the  hearts  of  the  men  of  His  generation.  As  we 
shall  see,  He  began  His  work  by  appealing  to  that 
faith  and  by  calling  it  out  into  action.  It  was,  let 
us  repeat,  faith  which  had  been  written  on  parch¬ 
ment  and  preserved  in  a  book  only  because  it  had 
first  been  written  and  re-written  on  the  living 
hearts  of  men.  It  was  faith  in  God  and  in  His 
purpose  for  the  world;  it  was  therefore  faith 
troubled  by  life’s  tragedies,  fatalities,  adversities. 
It  was  faith  in  man  as  made  for  God ;  it  was  there¬ 
fore  faith  oppressed  by  man’s  incapacity  and  un¬ 
willingness  to  serve  Him.  It  was  faith  still  dis¬ 
satisfied,  still  in  the  making. 

We  come,  then,  to  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  We  will 
make  that  Man,  as  He  came  into  the  villages  of 
Galilee,  the  point  of  departure. 

Strictly  speaking,  that  is  not  the  right  starting- 
point.  The  proper  historical  procedure,  in  studying 


52 


BEHOLD  THE  MAN 


53 


the  New  Testament,  is  to  begin  with  some  of  the 
Epistles.  They  are  the  earliest  documents  in  the 
book.  And  they  imply  that,  from  the  very  first, 
what  had  been  carried  out  to  the  world  in  the  Name 
of  Jesus  was  Good  News  about  God,  and  not 
merely  a  story  about  a  good  man.  And  the  Gos¬ 
pels  were  written  down  (preserving  the  teaching 
that  had  been  given  by  word  of  mouth  by  eye¬ 
witnesses)  by  believers  in  the  Good  News  for  the 
benefit  of  other  believers.  That  is  clear!  v  stated  in 
the  first  verses  of  the  Gospel  according  to  St. 
Luke.  Strictly,  then,  the  right  starting-point  is 
the  Epistles. 

Nevertheless  the  preferable  starting-point  for  us 
is  the  moment  when  Jesus  of  Nazareth  began  to 
go  about  the  villages  of  Galilee  preaching  (Mark 
i :  14) .  For  that  was  the  beginning  of  the  experi¬ 
ence  of  those  who  followed  Him.  That  experience 
had  as  its  outcome  the  Christian  faith.  But  in 
order  to  understand  that  faith  afresh  it  is  essential 
not  to  read  the  end  into  the  beginning,  not  to  in¬ 
terpret  the  story  of  the  ministry  in  the  light  of 
subsequent  doctrine,  but  to  begin  as  the  friends  of 
Jesus  began  and,  in  thought,  to>  follow  Him — the 
Man  of  Nazareth. 

The  starting-point  must  be  the  Man  and  not  the 
Word  made  Flesh.  Reality  demands  this.  For 
the  plain  truth  is  that  the  personality  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  has  become  unreal  to  a  multitude  of 
people.  This  has  partly  been  due  to  familiarity. 
It  has  also  been  due  to  the  infirmities  of  the  devo¬ 
tional  mind.  For  devotion  has  surrounded  the 


54  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


figure  of  Jesus  with  a  great  haze  of  sweet  and 
sometimes  sickly  sentiment.  Art,  too,  has  had 
some  hand  in  this  de-realising  process.  Mawkish 
pictures  of  Jesus  have  had  a  wide  circulation.  Un¬ 
doubtedly  doctrine  has  contributed  too.  The 
divinity  of  Jesus  has  been  exalted  at  the  expense 
of  His  humanity. 

And  on  any  showing  this  loss  of  reality  is  tragic. 
It  is,  for  one  thing,  most  incompatible  with  the 
Man  who  was  the  most  resolute  opponent  of  un¬ 
reality  (or  sham,  or  sentimentality,  or  humbug)  in 
history.  It  is  a  grievous  loss  to  orthodoxy.  For  if 
the  Incarnation  means  the  expression  of  God’s 
character  in  terms  of  a  human  personality,  then  the 
obscuring  and  hiding  of  that  human  personality  is 
disastrous.  It  is  comparable  to  having  a  defective 
electric  light  bulb  which  dims  the  bright  light  of 
which  it  should  be  the  medium.  It  is  almost  as 
great  a  loss  to  those  who  stop  short  of  belief  in  the 
Incarnation  and  assume  some  sort  of  Unitarian 
position.  Such  people  make  much  of  the  example 
and  ideals  of  Jesus.  Obviously  they  lose  greatly  if 
the  reality  of  His  manhood  has  been  obscured. 
Finally,  if  for  no  other  reason,  there  is  loss, 
namely,  the  loss  of  a  great  work  of  art. 

Now  this  is  unquestionably  where  modern  schol¬ 
arship  comes  in.  It  has  been  suspect  by  many 
devout  believers,  and  truly  it  has  often  been  full  of 
extravagance.  In  its  waters,  so  to  say,  the  wild 
asses  have  often  enough  quenched  their  thirst.  But 
it  has  had  great  results.  It  has  saved  the  Old 
Testament  from  being  a  closed  book.  It  has  re- 


BEHOLD  THE  MAN 


55 


established  its  unique  significance.  It  is  doing  a 
like  work  with  the  New  Testament.  And  in  par¬ 
ticular  it  is  being  the  means  whereby  the  personal¬ 
ity  of  the  Founder  of  Christianity  lives  again  in  its 
pristine  vividness  and  force.  It  has  shed  a  blaze  of 
light  in  a  region  too  long  half-lit  by  a  dim  religious 
twilight.  Its  method  has  been  historical  as  con¬ 
trasted  with  dogmatic.  It  has,  so  to  say,  lifted  the 
halo  of  doctrinal  attributes  from  the  brow  of  the 
Master.  Sometimes  it  has  done  so  irreverently,  but 
far  more  often  it  has  done  so  with  the  true  rever¬ 
ence  of  those  who'  are  in  quest  of  truth.  It  has 
mainly  been  in  tune  with  the  courage  and  candour 
of  Jesus.  It  has  set  aside  the  traditional  doctrine 
through  which  He  has  for  so  long  been  contem* 
plated,  and  in  so  doing  it  has  been  brought  to 
acknowledge  afresh — sometimes  no  doubt  with  re¬ 
luctance,  but  more  often  with  wonder  and  joy — the 
truth  which  that  doctrine  expressed. 

Its  method  therefore  shall  be  ours.  And  in  par¬ 
ticular,  as  has  been  indicated,  we  will  adopt  its 
starting-point  in  the  study  of  the  New  Testament, 
namely,  the  Man,  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Behold  the 
Man !  Whatever  else  is  or  is  not  true  about  Him, 
it  is  indubitable  that  He  emerged  in  the  prime  of 
His  manhood  from  a  home  in  Nazareth,  where  to 
neighbours  and  acquaintances  He  had  been  known 
as  one  of  themselves.  He  had  been  the  familiar 
carpenter,  the  son  of  Mary,  and  brother  of  James 
and  Joses  and  Judas  and  Simon.  He  had  been  in 
His  own  country  and  among  His  own  kin,  and  in 
His  own  house  (Mark  vi:2-6).  The  thing  to  do. 


56  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


therefore,  by  a  deliberate  effort,  is  to  make  no  more 
assumptions  about  Him,  but  simply  to  identify 
oneself  with  those  among  whom  He  came  with  a 
terse  ringing  announcement  on  His  lips,  and  to  fol¬ 
low  with  those  who  responded  to  His  call,  and  to 
see  what  comes  of  it. 

To  say,  at  the  very  start,  that  “here  is' the 
virgin-born  Incarnate  Son  of  God  ”  is  to-  beg  great 
questions.  That  implies  a  clear  and  untroubled 
understanding  of  what  is  meant  by  God.  It  im¬ 
plies,  too,  a  mind  at  ease  about  miracles.  But  both 
implications  are  notoriously  absent  to-day.  As  has 
been  seen  in  earlier  chapters,  the  questions  which 
are  being  asked  to-day  (often,  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say,  by  men  in  an  agony)  are  questions  about 
God.  It  is  hopeless  to  ignore  that  fact  and  to  beg 
those  questions. 

Further,  to  do  so  is  to  neglect  the  fact,  so  strongly 
emphasized  in  previous  chapters,  that  the  faith  in 
Jewish  hearts  was  not  a  satisfied  and  peaceful  and 
complete  understanding  of  what  was  meant  by  the 
name  of  God,  but  was  intimately  intermixed  with 
doubt  and  with  the  pain  of  unsolved  enigmas. 
Jesus  appealed  without  reserve  to  that  faith.  He 
counted  upon  its  vitality.  But  that  to  which  He 
appealed  was  not  a  finished  and  fixed  thing,  but  was 
still  in  the  making,  and  awaiting  completion  and 
correction. 

This  emerges  with  great  clearness  in  the  dramatic 
course  of  the  ministry  of  Jesus.  Unquestionably 
He  looked  “  for  faith  in  Israel,”  but  equally  un¬ 
questionably  the  faith  which  He  found  there  was 


BEHOLD  THE  MAN 


57 


inadequate  to  the  task  of  following  Him.  It  was, 
as  will  appear,  a  faith  which  could  not  reconcile 
God  with  suffering  but  only  with  success.  It  was 
a  faith  therefore  which  broke  under  the  impact  of 
the  terrifying  crisis  up  to  which  Jesus  led  His  fol¬ 
lowers.  For  it  was  (and  it  is  quite  essential  to 
recognise  this)  faith  which  had  not  recognised  that 
Jesus  was  the  Incarnate  Son  of  God.  Hence  it  was 
faith  which  could  see  nothing  of  God  in  the  dark¬ 
ness  of  Calvary. 

That,  then,  is  the  justification  for  beginning 
again  with  the  Man  Jesus.  We  will  refrain  from 
assuming  and  reading  into  the  story  of  His  life  just 
the  very  truths  about  which,  as  they  followed  Jesus 
of  old,  men  were  thrown  into  crucial  doubt. 


VIII 


BEHOLD  THE  MAN— II 


HE  modern  starting-point  of  New  Testament 


study  is  the  Man,  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  For 


reasons  given  in  the  last  chapter  it  is  also 
the  starting-point  of  these  chapters.  We  will  try 
to  beg  no  questions  about  Jesus,  except  that  He  was 
a  man.  We  will  try  the  hypothesis  that  He  was 
only  a  man.  That  is  the  first  thing  to  do. 

Wherever  that  hypothesis  is  not  faced  and  tried, 
it  is  apt  to  avenge  the  neglect.  It  keeps  suggesting 
to  minds  confronted  by  the  edifice  of  Christian 
doctrine  that  that  edifice  is  shaky  in  its  founda¬ 
tions.  It  hovers,  as  it  were,  as  a  menace  on  the 
flank  of  those  who  advance,  without  more  ado, 
towards  the  further  Christian  positions.  It  is, 
moreover,  an  hypothesis  which  has  a  wide  currency 
in  minds  of  people  both  within  and  without  the 
Church  (especially  among  younger  folk).  For 
most  of  the  world  to-day  is  semi-Unitarian  in 
belief.  And,  as  has  been  said,  it  was  the  starting- 
point  of  the  men  among  whom  Jesus  came  preach¬ 
ing.  The  Gospel  story  is  of  a  friendship  which 
began  when  a  Jew  came  among  Jews  with  an  an¬ 
nouncement  for  Jewish  ears  and  hearts. 

The  first  thing  to  notice  is  that  this  announce¬ 
ment  is  the  same  as  that  of  another  man,  John  the 
Baptist. 


58 


BEHOLD  THE  MAN 


59 


John  was  the  breaker  of  the  silence  of  many 
generations.  For  very  long  no  prophet  had  spoken. 
Rather  there  had  been  men  who  since  the  Exile, 
four  or  five  centuries  before,  had  pondered  on  the 
great  truths  given  to  Israel  in  the  famous  pro¬ 
phetic  times.  The  intervening  years  had  seen 
the  fixing  of  a  strong,  closely- woven  ecclesiastical 
system.  It  had  been  the  period  during  which 
thinkers  had  reflected  on  the  great  past,  and  had 
had  their  reflections  (as  we  have  seen)  disturbed 
by  deep  perplexities  which  find  expression  in 
some  of  the  Psalms  and  the  Books  of  Wisdom. 
There  had  been  also  a  whole  school  of  dreamers 
and  poets  who  saw  visions  of  the  future  and 
were  responsible  for  what  is  known  as  Apocalyptic 
literature. 

But  no  prophet  had  spoken.  That  ancient  foun¬ 
tain  had  ceased  to  play.  But  now,  once  again,  to 
the  agitation  and  wonder  of  the  whole  community, 
the  authentic  note  of  prophecy  rang  out  again,  and 
was  acknowledged  to>  be  such  (“  for  all  hold  John 
as  a  prophet  ”). 

His  message  is  rooted  in  the  characteristic  faith 
of  Israel.  It  is  faith  in  God  as  creative  and  pur¬ 
posive,  and  at  work  on  that  for  which  He  had 
called  out  Israel  and  made  them  the  people  of  a 
great  destiny.  And  the  note  of  the  message  is 
charged  with  urgency  and  sense  of  crisis.  John 
announces  the  coming  of  God’s  day — the  coming 
to  fulfilment  of  His  purposes.  His  summons  is  to 
Jews  who  are  Jews  not  only  in  name  but  in  heart. 
He  calls  them  to  a  change  of  heart  and  mind,  to 


60  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


repentance  and  expectation.  He  bids  them  be  ready 
for  the  great  Coming. 

And  Jesus  takes  up  his  message.  He,  too,  looks 
for  characteristic  Jewish  faith — alive,  awake,  un¬ 
extinguished  by  long  waiting.  He  builds  upon  the 
work  of  His  predecessor.  He  quite  explicitly  said 
that  a  whole-hearted  response  to  the  summons  de¬ 
livered  by  John  was  necessary  for  sharing  in  His 
own  movement  (Matt,  xxi  :23  ff . ) .  He  makes  it 
quite  clear  that  what  is  on  foot  is  that  for  which 
prophets  and  righteous  men  had  waited  and  had 
longed  to  see  (Matt,  xiii  :1 7).  He  lays  His  finger 
on  that  message  of  the  great  prophet  of  the  Exile 
which  is  most  fully  charged  with  faith  in  the  com¬ 
ing  of  times  of  divine  liberation  (Luke  iv:16fL). 
He  declares  that  all  the  law  and  the  prophets  came 
to  a  climax  in  the  preaching  of  John  (Matt,  xi :  13 ) . 
He  announces  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

Now  whatever  that  last  phrase  does  or  does  not 
mean  it  has  one  focus — God.  That  to  which  Jesus 
called  men  is  the  very  centre  of  things,  the  living 
reality,  unseen  but  at  work — the  One  God.  And 
what  He  demanded  that  men  should  bring  in 
answer  to  the  call  was  nothing  less  than  the  whole 
of  themselves — their  inmost  heart.  The  essential 
significance  of  His  terse  and  ringing  summons,  as 
of  a  bugleman  calling  an  army  to  its  feet,  lies  there, 
in  the  bare  elements  of  religion.  That  is,  it  has  to 
do  with  the  living  God  and  the  living  hearts  of  men. 

All  this  will  come  home  to'  anyone  who  will  think 
afresh  of  the  faith  of  Jesus  Himself.  It  is  that 
into  which  He  grew  as  a  Jew.  For  it  would  empty 


BEHOLD  THE  MAN 


61 


His  life  of  all  reality  to  deny  the  fact,  of  which  the 
New  Testament  is  quite  unafraid,  that  He  grew  up 
through  boyhood  to'  manhood  and  that  when  ar¬ 
rived  at  manhood,  He  had  to  go*  forward  to  learn 
step  by  step  that  to  which  God  had  called  Him 
(  “  though  He  was  a  Son  yet  He  learned  obedience  ” 
— Hebrews  v  :8) . 

This  faith  of  Jesus  had,  to  use  a  musical  phrase, 
a  dominant.  From  first  to  last  it  had  one  centre — 
the  Father.  His  life  was  one  persistent  concentra¬ 
tion — passionate  and  yet  serene — on  the  unseen 
Reality  which  He  so  named.  He  had  one  thing  to 
do.  It  was  to  cast  Himself,  in  loyal  and  unreserved 
self-giving,  into  co-operation  with  the  active  will  of 
God.  The  picture  of  Him,  to  be  drawn  by  the 
imagination,  should  be  deeply  coloured  to-day  by 
the  vivid  memories,  which  lie  hidden  in  hearts  all 
the  world  over,  of  human  nature  rising  to<  its  height 
at  the  summons  of  war  and  yielding  itself  trust¬ 
fully  and  selflessly  to>  the  call  to  give  all. 

The  Jesus,  whom  artists  have  yet  to1  portray, 
should  be  visualised  as  the  captain  and  leader  of  the 
ranks  of  men,  who  as  heroes,  sportsmen,  adventur¬ 
ers,  soldiers,  lovers  have  found  the  secret  of  life  in 
giving  themselves  away.  Only,  in  their  case  it  is  a 
secret  but  half -consciously  apprehended  and  marred 
ever  and  again  by  a  mixture  of  motive.  While  in 
Him  all  was  fully  conscious  and  entirely  unalloyed 
by  self-serving.  He  had  one  thing  to<  do  and  He 
did  it — it  was  His  meat  to  do  it — namely,  the  will 
of  the  Father. 

And  this  is  what  He  wanted  and  expected  others 


62  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


to  share  in.  He  assumed  that  there  was  in  the 
Jewish  hearts  about  Him  a  faith  in  God,  as  wanting 
the  co-operation  of  His  children,  which  would  set 
them  moving  with  Himself  as  comrades  in  His 
great  adventure.  He  plainly  saw  that  it  was  His 
part  to  invite  others  to  realise  that  for  which  they 
were  made  in  God’s  image,  and  to  enter  into  their 
birthright  as  children  of  God.  He  looked  for 
brethren  who  were  willing  with  Him  to  do  the 
Father’s  will  (Mark  iii  :3 1  £f).  That  is  what  He 
meant  by  calling  others  to  enter  into  the  Kingdom 
of  God.  It  was,  as  He  said,  an  invitation  to  guests 
to  come  to  a  feast  fully  prepared. 

And  further,  this  single  emphasis  of  Jesus  on  the 
Father  as  longing  for — as  wanting — His  children, 
carried  with  it  a  certain  view  of  the  world  as  the 
Father’s  world.  He  had  a  certain  philosophy  of 
life.  He  looked  upon  the  world  around  Him  as 
abounding  in  evidence  of  what  God  is.  In  the 
flowers  of  the  field,  in  little  children,  in  the  ordinary 
pursuits  of  shepherds,  housewives,  men  of  business, 
servants,  He  saw  signs  of  the  unseen  Other.  Not 
that  He  took  just  a  rose-coloured  view  of  life.  He 
was  alive  to  the  harsh  side  of  nature — its  torrents 
and  floods  which  sweep  human  life  away.  He  was 
aware  of  life’s  accidents — towers  which  fall  and 
crush  men  to  pulp.  He  was  brought  up  against  a 
mighty  force  of  evil  will  holding  men  captive  body 
and  soul.  And  this  in  fact  was  what  called  out  His 
intolerance.  Because  it  was  the  Father’s  world 
with  the  Father’s  children  in  it,  He  was  passion¬ 
ately  impatient  of  what  the  powers  of  evil  were 


BEHOLD  THE  MAN 


63 


doing  with  that  world  and  with  those  children. 
Hence  His  confiding  appeal  to  others  to  share  in 
His  work  of  bringing  release  to  the  captives  and 
recovery  of  sight  to  the  blind. 

Finally,  His  interpretation  of  the  world,  His  in¬ 
tense  zest  and  interest  in  its  affairs,  His  valuation 
of  its  citizens  as  each  one  of  infinite  value — all  this 
was  bound  up  with  His  vision  of  a  world  beyond 
this  world.  This  carried  with  it  no  depreciation  of 
this  world,  rather  the  other  way.  Every  moment 
of  this  life  and  all  rounds  of  daily  duty  were  to 
Him  of  importance,  because  they  had  to  do  with 
the  destiny  of  pilgrims  passing  through  this  life 
to  the  life  beyond.  His  offer  therefore  to  men  was 
final.  He  counted  on  its  acceptance.  It  was  that 
they  should  close,  there  and  then  and  for  ever,  with 
the  eternal  reality  of  God. 


IX 


THE  GREAT  REFUSAL 


ESUS  made  the  supreme  offer  to  the  men  of 


His  generation.  He  was  met,  in  the  main,  by 


a  great  refusal.  That  is  one  way  of  summing 
up  the  Gospel  story. 

The  offer  was  that  as  Jews — as  God’s  children — 
they  should  close,  with  their  whole  souls,  with  the 
purposes  of  God,  which  then  and  there  and  at  the 
supreme  hour  were  in  fulfilment.  Whatever  else 
was  or  was  not  in  the  knowledge  of  Jesus — it  is 
wise  to  be  largely  agnostic  on  this  subject — He 
knew  that  the  God  of  all  the  earth,  whom  He  called 
Father,  wanted  His  children,  that  they  might  be 
the  instruments  of  His  will.  On  that  subject,  that 
is  about  the  present  fact  of  the  living  God,  Jesus 
spoke  with  absolute  and  unwavering  authority. 
There  is  no  quiver  of  hesitation  or  qualification  in 
His  words.  And  He  not  only  spoke,  but  acted. 
With  singleness  of  spiritual  vision,  that  looked  out¬ 
ward  from  self  into  the  unseen,  He  adventured 
Himself  upon  one  unreserved  and  persistent  effort 
to  live  out  the  life  of  a  son.  And  He  set  Himself 
to  win  others  to  do  the  same,  so  that  they,  with 
Him,  might  be  caught  up  into  the  energetic  move¬ 
ment  of  the  Father’s  will. 

The  fact  that  Jesus  made  this  challenge  to  His 
contemporaries  to  close  with  the  Father’s  offer — or, 


64 


THE  GREAT  REFUSAL 


65 


in  other  words,  to  enter  His  Kingdom — is  what 
gives  dramatic  intensity  to  the  story  of  His  life. 
For  the  note  of  “  now-or-never  ”  ran  through  His 
invitation.  He  was  unrelenting  in  His  demand  for 
decision.  This  means  that  in  exposing  men  to  the 
call  of  opportunity,  which  they  had  either  to  seize 
or  to  miss,  He  acted  as  tester  of  their  very  souls. 
What  men  actually  were  at  the  moment  when  His 
call  sounded  in  their  ears  was  laid  perfectly  bare. 
By  demanding  of  men  a  final  choice  He  inevitably 
brought  them  under  judgment  (or  testing).  This 
is  what  has  been  called  the  “  stormy  north  side  ”  of 
Jesus.  It  is  utterly  sentimental  and  fictitious  to 
paint  Him  in  only  soft  and  melting  colours.  He  is 
the  Man  with  the  fan  in  His  hand.  He  is  the  sifter, 
the  tester,  the  judge — the  most  awful  figure  in 
history.  And  all  this  because  of  the  offer  that  He 
made,  the  offer  which  was  an  invitation  as  to  a 
marriage  feast. 

The  offer  or  invitation  was  a  real  one,  because  it 
left  men  free  to  seize  or  miss  it.  That  is  another 
salient  element  in  the  story.  Despite  His  intense 
eagerness  to  win  others  to  God,  Jesus  resolutely 
refrained  from  encroaching  on  their  freedom.  He 
was  faced  by  all  the  temptations  which  beset  those 
who  would  “  get  at  ”  others.  He  wanted  to  sway 
the  elusive  hearts  of  men.  He  wanted  to  win  them 
entirely.  What  should  be  His  method  or  strategy? 
There  to  His  hand  were  the  well-known  implements 
which  men  use  to  seduce,  bamboozle,  stampede 
others  and  sway  them  to  their  will.  Fie  could  use 
bread  or  mystery  or  force.  That  is,  He  could  ap- 


66  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


peal  to  their  stomachs,  their  credulity  or  their  fear. 
But  only  at  the  expense  of  what  made  them  rational 
beings,  fitted  for  the  supreme  privilege  of  freely 
loving  God  with  all  their  hearts  and  souls  and 
minds.  So  He  set  aside  (see  the  story  of  the 
Temptation)  every  freedom-destroying  method  and 
appeal.  He  set  out  simply  to  win  a  free  response. 
He  made  His  appeal  to  the  venturesomeness,  the 
heroic,  the  loving,  the  selfless  in  men,  and  He  left 
it  there. 

In  the  main  the  appeal  failed  to  call  out  response. 
His  offer  for  the  most  part  was  refused.  The  fire 
(to  use  His  own  words)  which  He  came  to  cast 
upon  the  earth  fell  upon  damp  fuel.  He  found 
men  unable  or  unwilling  to  attend.  The  story  of 
the  Sower  is  the  summary  of  this  experience.  He 
was  met  by  hardness,  shallowness,  frivolity  and 
preoccupation  of  heart,  by  all  that  makes  the  Name 
of  God  sound  faint  in  men’s  hearing,  so  that,  as  a 
result,  what  should  be  first  comes  last  in  their 
attention. 

But  He  was  also  met  by  something  more  posi¬ 
tive,  to  wit,  a  positively  wrong  idea  of  God.  This 
He  found  in  the  religious  leaders  of  the  day.  Pride 
of  race,  of  ancestry,  of  covenant  had  bred  in  the 
Pharisees  the  notion  of  God  as  having  favour¬ 
ites.  Whereas  to  Jesus  God  was  the  undiscrimi¬ 
nating  lover  of  sinners.  Hence  an  acute  discord. 
Hence  a  self-satisfied  blindness  upon  which,  as  it 
were,  Jesus  could  only  lay  the  scourge  of  His 
condemnation. 

So  the  offer  in  the  main  was  refused  and  the 


THE  GREAT  REFUSAL 


67 


opportunity  missed.  It  was  a  real  offer;  there 
was  a  real  chance  of  it  being  closed  with.  Its 
refusal  was  not  inevitable  or  pre-ordained.  It  takes 
all  reality  out  of  the  story  to  read  it  otherwise.  To 
do  so  empties  the  plain  expression  by  Jesus  of  His 
surprise  and  grief  and  indignation  at  the  recalci¬ 
trance  and  refusal  of  men  to  respond  to  His  call — it 
empties  it  of  meaning.  If,  for  doctrinal  reasons. 
He  is  understood  as  seeing  the  end  in  the  begin¬ 
ning;  if  it  is  not  allowed  that  He  faced  genuine 
disappointment,  then  actuality  is  taken  out  of  the 
experience  of  Jesus, 

Yet  the  rejection  was  not  entire.  He  sifted  some 
wheat  out  of  the  chaff.  He  found  some  faith  alive 
in  Israel.  Some  kindled  at  His  fire.  The  “  honest 
and  true  ”  hearts  of  some  were  ready  for  the  word 
of  the  Kingdom.  And  with  them  as  His  friends 
Jesus  went  forward  to  see  things  out.  Another 
main  element,  therefore,  in  the  story  is  His  with¬ 
drawal  from  a  public  and  popular  mission,  in  order 
to  concentrate  in  private  upon  the  education  of  a 
few.  He  set  to  work  to  temper  to  the  last  degree 
the  steel  of  the  links  which  bound  others  to  Him¬ 
self  as  brethren  in  the  doing  of  the  will  of  God. 
These  were  the  men — let  us  note  in  passing — from 
whom  the  whole  story  is  derived.  Jesus  used  no 
literary  means  for  getting  His  message  out  to  the 
world.  He  committed  everything  to  the  witness  of 
living  men.  He  wrote,  not  on  paper,  but  on  their 
hearts. 

We  ought,  then,  to  follow  through  the  education 
by  Jesus  of  the  surviving  remnant  of  all  who  heard 


68  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


His  initial  summons.  To  those  that  had,  He  gave. 
He  poured  fuel  on  the  fire  of  their  faith  and  ex¬ 
pectation.  He  tested  them  and  put  them  to  the 
proof.  He  raised  their  Jewish  faith  in  God  to  its 
highest  power.  He  brought  them  to  the  point  of 
receiving  from  the  Father  the  tremendous  truth 
that  He,  their  Master  and  Brother,  was  Messiah — 
was,  that  is,  the  man  chosen  by  God  to  bring  all 
history  to  a  climax  and  to  inaugurate  the  reign  of 
God  among  men. 

The  acknowledgment,  therefore,  at  Caesarea 
Philippi  (Mark  viii:27ff.)  by  Peter  of  Jesus  as 
Messias  is  the  turning-point  in  the  whole  story.  It 
meant  that  Jesus  had  reached  a  foundation  on 
which  to1  build.  He  had  dug  down  through  every 
layer  of  superficiality,  to  the  very  heart’s  core  of 
Jewish  faith.  Though  He  was  almost  a  vagabond 
among  men,  a  failure  among  the  many,  pursued 
and  antagonised  by  the  influential  few,  yet  His 
friends  saw  in  Him  the  means  through  which 
the  age-long  purpose  of  God  was  to  be  wrought 
out  into  victory.  Jesus  had  found  companions 
with  whom;  to  go  forward  to  the  climax  of  His 
endeavour. 

Yet  in  the  end  He  was  bereft  of  all  companions. 
For  the  accomplishment  of  the  will  of  the  Father 
through  suffering  and  humiliation  was  more  than 
they  could  understand.  The  moment  it  was  dis¬ 
closed  to  them  in  word  by  the  Master  it  was  re¬ 
pudiated.  “  That  be  far  from  Thee,  Lord !  ”  said 
Peter  in  rebuke,  only  to  meet  with  the  fierce 
counter-rebuke  which  shot  from  the  fiercely-tried 


THE  GREAT  REFUSAL 


69 


soul  of  his  leader — “  Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan ! 
You  are,”  in  other  words,  “  the  advocatus  diaboli; 
you  are  echoing  my  life-long  temptation.” 

For  there  was  “  a  thing  of  God  ”  which  Peter 
and  the  others  could  not  fit  into  their  idea  of  God. 
They  could  not  understand  how  the  Father  could 
allow  some  of  His  children  freely  to  work  their 
will  with  His  Messiah.  Their  expectations,  burn¬ 
ing  like  a  flame  to  a  great  height,  were*  quite  other. 
Their  thought  of  God,  whose  Day  and  whose  Man 
were  present,  was  just  the  Old  Testament  thought 
of  Him  as  the  supreme  and  all-powerful  Monarch. 
They  moved  forward,  therefore,  to  the  hour  of 
glory  which  would  display  the  all-rectifying  power 
of  God.  They  dreamed  of  high  places  for  them¬ 
selves  in  the  coming  Kingdom.  But  suffering  was 
outside  their  idea  of  the  divine.  In  other  words, 
they  could  not  fully  think  of  God  as  Love.  And 
by  no-  spoken  word  could  Jesus  correct  what  was 
wrong  in  their  Jewish  faith.  All  He  could  do  was 
to  go  on  alone  to  work  out  to  the  last  the  loving 
heart-whole  obedience  of  the  Son  to  the  Father. 
So  Pie  went,  with  His  incommunicable  secret.  Ex¬ 
plaining  nothing,  but  facing  everything,  He  went 
straight  on  into  the  deep  darkness  of  the  world’s 
suffering  and  ignorance  and  sin.  With  an  all- 
confiding  trustfulness  He  threw  Himself  upon  the 
Father,  whose  will  called  Him  into  the  darkness. 

Thus  He  was  caught  away  from  His  baffled  and 
broken  friends.  Their  high  hopes  fell  to  the 
ground,  the  fabric  of  their  dreams  was  .rent  as 
bubbles  are  burst.  For  though  He  had  hazarded  all 


70  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


in  faith  in  God,  yet  He  had  been  caught  up  and  had 
been  done  to  death  and  had  gone  down  in  silence, 
leaving  ringing  in  their  ears  the  cry,  characteristic 
of  the  age-long  agony  of  man,  “  My  God,  My  God, 
why  hast  Thou  forsaken  Me?  ” 


X 


THE  CRUCIAL  QUESTION 


w 


HEN  I  survey  the  wondrous  Cross.” 
.  .  .  “  Hold  Thou  the  Cross  before 
my  closing  eyes !  ”  .  .  . 

These  and  many  other  familiar  lines  imply  that 
the  Cross  is  radiant  with  comfort  and  hope.  But 
to  the  men  who  had  left  all  and  had  followed  Jesus, 
as  companions  in  His  great  adventure,  it  was  as 
the  stroke  of  doom  falling  in  the  night. 

What  had  Jesus  done  when  in  impotence  He 
came  to  die  between  the  nameless  thieves  on  Gol¬ 
gotha?  He  had  done  nothing  but  raise  expectation 
to  its  very  highest  pitch.  That  is  the  plain  mean¬ 
ing  of  the  Gospel  story,  once  it  is  understood  as  a 
drama  mounting  to  a  climax. 

In  the  earlier  stages  of  their  friendship  with 
Jesus  His  followers  were  as  it  were  bathed  in  the 
sunshine  of  hope  and  anticipation.  Their  souls 
vibrated  in  response  to  the  announcement — uttered 
by  John,  reiterated  by  Jesus — of  the  coming  of  the 
Great  Day,  which  for  generations  others  had  longed 
to  see  and  had  not  seen.  Yet  over  the  sunshine 
crept  the  shadows.  And  over  the  ardour  of  their 
souls  there  blew  chilling  winds.  And  in  the  end 
the  darkness  and  desolation  of  night  fell  upon  them. 
That  was  undoubtedly  the  experience  of  those  men. 
Take  Peter.  As  foremost  follower  of  Jesus  he  was 


71 


72  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


all  fire  and  impetuosity.  But  in  the  end  he  was 
shivering-  by  the  fire  “  in  the  court  of  the  high- 
priest/’  a  broken  man,  a-tremble  at  a  girl’s  ques¬ 
tion,  overwhelmed  by  uttermost  tragedy. 

It  was  uttermost  tragedy  because  of  the  entirety 
of  trustfulness  with  which  Jesus  had  given  Himself 
to  do  the  Father’s  will.  He  had  been  the  perfect 
theocrat,  embodying  all  the  theocracy  of  His  people. 
That  is,  He  had  yielded  Himself  entirely  to  the  rule 
of  God.  His  life  had  been  one  persistent  act  of 
obedience  and  one  long  venture  of  faith.  And  yet 
this  was  the  end — the  squalor  and  filth  of  Calvary 
— the  darkness  and  silence  of  death. 

“  I  can  forgive  God  everything  but  His  perfect 
peace.”  That  is  the  kind  of  wild  defiance  which 
the  tragic  in  life  wrings  from  the  human  heart. 
Ever  and  again,  in  the  long — nobody  knows  how 
long — story  of  man  such  cries  break  out.  They 
spring  from  the  impact  upon  faith  and  hope  of 
brutal  and  blind  fate.  “  The  world  of  fact  is  too 
bad  for  God  to  be  good,”  says  the  Indian.  “  The 
world  of  fact  is  but  so  much  shadow,”  says  the 
Greek.  “No,”  says  the  Jew,  “  the  world  is  God’s 
world — where  He  is  at  work.”  “  Come,”  said 
Jesus,  “  put  it  once  and  for  all  to  the  proof !  ”  And 
that,  beyond  doubt,  is  what  He  did.  When  He  died 
on  the  Cross  He  raised  one  question,  the  in-the-end 
only  question,  the  crucial  question — whether  there 
is  any  reality  corresponding  to  what  men  call  God. 
That  is  what  was  at  issue  in  the  silence  and  night 
of  Calvary,  when  the  best  Man  had  come  to  the 
worst  end,  amid  the  dreadful  peace  of  God. 


THE  CRUCIAL  QUESTION 


73 


There  is  nothing  rhetorical  in  what  has  been 
said.  Every  man  who  was  at  the  Front — the  real 
battle-front — knows  more  or  less  what  is  meant. 
He  knows  of  men’s  trustfulness  and  courage  and 
heroism.  He  knows  how  they  were  poured  out 
unto  death.  But  all  the  more  dark,  then,  is  the 
question  of  God — seemingly  passive  and  at  peace 
amid  the  agonies  of  men.  The  war  has  brought 
myriads  of  people  up  against  this  crucial  issue.  It 
has  left  the  world’s  faith  mortally  struggling  with 
cynicism  and  disillusionment.  Men  do  not  talk 
much  about  these  tremendous  things.  It  is  not 
their  way.  There  is  so  much  else  to  be  done.  And 
after  all  here  is  life  and  the  cup  of  life.  “  Come,  let 
us  drink  it  while  we  have  breath,  for  there’s  no 
drinking  after  death,”  But  underneath,  in  in¬ 
numerable  hearts,  the  question  is  there — the  great 
question,  the  question  to  which  there  seems  to  be 
no  answer. 

And  yet  the  Cross  is  not  the  symbol  of  despair 
but  of  triumph.  It  was  and  still  is  the  centre  of 
good  news  about  God.  That  is  the  fact  which  de¬ 
mands  attention.  The  experience  of  the  last  terrific 
years  has  brought  men  up  against  the  facts — the 
realities — of  life.  Here,  then,  is  another  fact  for 
them  to  reckon  with.  It  is  the  fact  that  the  men 
who  were  with  Jesus,  whose  hopes  and  dreams  were 
shattered  by  the  disaster  of  Calvary,  yet  carried 
into  the  world,  at  a  certain  moment  in  its  secular 
history,  a  Gospel  of  God  of  which  the  centre  was 
the  Cross.  Men  have  contrived  to  doubt  most 
things  in  the  New  Testament.  But  two  facts  are 


74,  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


beyond  all  reasonable  doubt.  They  are,  first,  that 
Jesus  died  upon  the  Cross,  in  ignominy  and  fail¬ 
ure;  second,  that  His  friends,  in  preaching  the 
Cross,  were  agents  in  a  religious  movement  which 
changed  the  face  of  the  world. 

The  question,  then,  is  what  accounts  for  that 
extraordinary  movement.  If  the  two  facts  are  as 
two  separated  piers  of  rock,  what  bridged  the  gulf 
between  them?  How  did  the  friends  of  Jesus, 
broken  at  Calvary,  come  to  turn  the  world  upside 
down?  What  raised  Peter  from  despair  and  the 
depths  of  moral  defeat  to  victorious  Christian  lead¬ 
ership?  He  tells  us.  It  was  the  Resurrection.  His 
testimony  breaks  out  in  the  first  line  of  the  letter  of 
his  which  the  New  Testament  preserves.  “  Blessed 
be  the  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
who  begat  us  again  into  a  living  hope  by  the  resur¬ 
rection  of  Jesus  Christ  from  the  dead.” 

That  is  what  has  to  be  faced,  namely,  the  Resur¬ 
rection.  Those  who  have  been  brought  to  think 
about  the  questions  which  came  to  a  head  in  the 
Cross,  must  go  on  to  think  about  that  which  an¬ 
swers  those  questions.  Doubtless  this  is  just  what 
modern  thought  has  been  reluctant  to  do.  It  has 
been  very  chary  of  the  supernatural.  It  has  done 
its  very  best  to  lay  no  stress  at  all  on  the  super¬ 
natural  in  its  study  of  the  Bible.  It  has  tried  to  see 
what  remains  when  miracle  has  been  set  aside. 
And,  as  perhaps  may  have  been  indicated  in  these 
chapters,  its  efforts  have  been  fruitful.  They  have 
opened  the  doors  of  the  Old  Testament  which  mar¬ 
vels  had  closed.  In  particular  they  have  admitted 


THE  CRUCIAL  QUESTION 


75 


men  to  a  recovered  vision  of  the  real  Man,  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  whom  wonders  and  doctrines  had  hidden 
from  them. 

And  yet  the  more  determinedly  men  discard  the 
supernatural,  the  more  thoroughgoing  they  are  in 
their  naturalistic  philosophy — for  that  is  what  has 
been  dominant  in  modern  thought — the  more 
plainly  they  fail  to  account  for  the  fact  from  which 
they  all  agree  to  start,  to  wit,  that  a  Gospel  was 
preached  in  the  name  of  the  Crucified.  The  ques¬ 
tion,  then,  is  (we  will  discuss  it  further  in  the  next 
chapter)  whether  that  which  has  been  discarded 
and  rejected  will  “  come  again  ”  and  repossess  the 
minds  of  men.  Heart-shaking,  mind-stirring  times 
have  brought  multitudes  up  to  the  Cross.  They 
have  been  made  sensitive  to  the  questions  of 
which  it  was  the  epitome.  Will  they  go  on  to 
receive  the  answer  ?  Will  they  be  begotten  again 
into  a  living  hope  and  into  a  faith  which  overcomes 
the  world? 

There  is  little  doubt  that  the  philosophy  which 
has  made  thinkers  intolerant  of  the  supernatural  has 
touched  with  palsy  much  of  the  mind  and  soul  of 
recent  generations.  It  has  been  a  materialist  phi¬ 
losophy.  In  the  little  domain  of  philosophy  proper 
it  has  been  criticised — blown  upon.  But  neverthe¬ 
less  it  has  had  and  has  an  immense  popular  vogue. 
It  has  bred  a  certain  practical  frame  of  mind  in  men 
which,  while  it  does  not  deny,  is  in  effect  doubtful 
of  the  reality  of  God  and  of  the  soul.  It  has  en¬ 
couraged  the  exaltation  of  things  which  money  can 
buy  or  the  body  enjoy  over  the  things  of  the  spirit. 


76  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


It  has  relegated  the  truths  of  religion  to  the  sphere 
of  fancy  and  pious  hope. 

The  question  is  whether  its  sway  must  continue. 
Or  will  there  be  a  revivifying  of  the  minds  which 
it  has  paralysed?  In  other  words,  Will  the  Gospel 
of  the  Resurrection  repossess  the  minds  of  men, 
and  once  more  as  never  before  transform  the 
world  ? 


XI 


THE  NEW  CREATION 

THE  Resurrection  was  the  new-creative  act 
of  God  which  raised  the  disciples,  who  at 
the  Cross  had  been  buried  in  the  depths  of 
despair,  to  newness  of  life.  They  were  “  begotten 
again  ”  by  God  “  into  a  living  hope.” 

To  put  it  in  another  way,  the  Resurrection  was 
the  response  of  the  nature  of  things  to  the  faith  of 
Jesus.  That  faith  was  rooted  in  the  Jewish  faith — 
it  burnt  most  brightly  in  the  prophets — that  God 
was  not  merely  the  original  Source,  the  originating 
Architect  of  the  Universe,  but  was  in  the  present 
creatively  at  work  in  His  world,  with  a  purpose 
which  meant  the  springing  forth  of  new  things. 

The  Jews  were  extraordinarily  conservative  and 
tenacious  of  the  past.  They  kept  brooding  on  the 
things  of  old.  They  preserved  the  tales  of  former 
days  however  blotted  by  the  record  of  their  race’s 
sins  and  weaknesses.  To  do1  so  fortified  them  in 
facing  the  trials  of  the  present.  But  all  the  more 
were  they  challenged  by  the  prophets  to  look  for¬ 
ward  and  not  only  backward.  The  prophets  called 
them  to  expect  and  be  ready  for  new  things.  “  Re¬ 
member  ye  not  the  former  things,  neither  consider 
the  things  of  old.  Behold  I  will  do  a  new  thing: 
now  shall  it  spring  forth.  For  I  create  new  heav¬ 
ens  and  a  new  earth :  and  the  former  things  shall 


77 


78  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


not  be  remembered  nor  come  into  mind”  (Isaiah 
xliii  :18;  lxv:17). 

It  was  not  enough  for  Jeremiah  that  folk  should 
for  ever  keep  chiming  about  the  Lord,  who  brought 
the  children  of  Israel  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt. 
Faith  in  God  as  active  in  the  past  had  to  be  verified 
and  renewed  by  the  discovery  of  Him  as  active  in 
the  present.  “  Therefore,  behold,  the  days  come, 
saith  the  Lord,  that  they  shall  no  more  say,  ‘  As  the 
Lord  liveth,  which  brought  up  the  children  of  Israel 
out  of  the  land  of  Egypt;  but,  as  the  Lord  liveth 
which  brought  up  the  children  and  which  led  the 
seed  of  the  House  of  Israel  out  of  the  North 
Country/  ” 

Jewish  faith,  therefore,  at  its  height  was  for¬ 
ward-looking.  To  it  the  world  was  not  a  closed 
and  unchangeable  system,  but  was  big  with  new 
possibilities  and  was  still  in  the  making.  It  looked 
for  a  day  of  new  things. 

(It  is  interesting  to  note  that,  nevertheless,  the 
Jewish  Church  should  have  admitted  into  the  canon 
of  Scripture  a  book  which  gave  expression  to  dis¬ 
belief  in  the  possibility  of  new  things.  This  is  the 
Book  of  the  Preacher  and  is  called  Ecclesiastes. 
There  might  fitly  be  a  copy  of  it  in  clubs  and 
smoking-rooms,  where  men  commonly  scoff  at  re¬ 
forms  and  ideals  on  the  ground  that  “  you  can 
never  change  human  nature.”  It  is  the  book  which 
contains  the  best  astringent  antidote  to  Utopianism. 
It  is  a  book  of  weary  scepticism.  “  V anity  of 
vanities,  saith  the  Preacher,  all  is  vanity.  .  .  .  One 
generation  cometh  and  another  goeth  and  another 


THE  NEW  CREATION 


79 


generation  cometh ;  and  the  earth  abideth  for  ever. 
The  sun  also  ariseth,  and  the  sun  goeth  down,  and 
hasteth  to  his  place  where  he  ariseth.  .  .  .  All  the 
rivers  run  into  the  sea  and  yet  the  sea  is  not  full; 
unto  the  place  whither  the  rivers,  go,  thither  they 
go  again.  All  things  are  full  of  weariness;  man 
cannot  utter  it :  the  eye  is  not  satisfied  with  seeing, 
nor  the  ear  filled  with  hearing.  That  which  hath 
been  is  that  which  shall  be;  and  that  which  hath 
been  done  is  that  which  shall  be  done :  and  there  is 
no  new  thing  under  the  sun  ”  (Ecclesiastes  i  :2-9). 
It  is  well  put.  There  is  no  need,  as  we  said  in 
Chapter  VI.,  to  depend  on  Omar  Khayyam  for  the 
expression  of  disbelief  in  progress  and  in  the  ar¬ 
rival  of  new  things.) 

But  Jesus  put  His  seal  to  prophetic  faith.  He 
came  proclaiming  the  Kingdom — the  coming  of  the 
new  age.  He  confessed  Himself,  as  having  been 
entrusted  with  new  wine.  And  He  lived  in  the 
world  on  the  assumption  that  it  was  alive  with  the 
creative,  restorative  powers  of  the  living  God.  For 
the  world  to  Him  was  the  Father’s  world,  filled 
with  boundless  possibilities  if  drawn  upon  by 
whole-hearted  faith. 

And  then  there  fell  upon  Him  the  conservatism, 
the  dislike  of  new  things,  the  disbelief  of  both 
Church  and  State.  The  old  skins  would  not  con¬ 
tain  the  new  wine.  The  old  order  resented  the  an¬ 
nouncement  of  a  new.  And,  in  a  sinister  confeder¬ 
acy,  ecclesiastics  and  statesmen — the  former  in  open 
antagonism,  the  latter  in  readiness  to  be  relieved  of 
disturbance  and  agitation — spilt,  as  they  thought. 


80  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


the  new  wine  on  the  ground.  The  prophet  of  new 
things  was  suppressed.  “  He  was  crucified,  dead, 
and  buried.” 

Yet  “  on  the  third  day  He  rose  again.”  Though 
He  met  with  all  degrees  of  disbelief,  He  went  right 
through  with  His  decisive  and  crucial  experiment 
of  faith.  He  backed  His  belief  with  His  life.  In 
so  doing  He  challenged  the  nature  of  things.  And 
the  nature  of  things  responded.  The  Father  made 
answer  tO'  the  faith  of  such  a  Son.  The  night  of 
Calvary  was  followed  by  the  day  of  new  things. 
The  victory  of  “  things  as  they  are  ”  was  swallowed 
up  by  the  new  creation.  And  the  rest  of  the  New 
Testament  rings  and  vibrates  with  this  passing  of 
the  old  and  the  coming  of  the  new.  “If  any  man 
be  in  Christ,  he  is  a  new  creature :  old  things  are 
passed  away :  behold  all  things  are  become  new.” 

We  are  at  the  springs  of  faith  which  overcomes 
the  world.  Nevertheless  it  is  hard  to  deny  that  in 
a  great  measure  the  world  has  overcome  the  faith 
of  the  Church. 

The  Church,  at  any  rate  since  the  great  early 
days,  has  made  far  more  of  the  Cross  than  of  the 
Resurrection.  It  has  often  been  content  to  despair 
of  the  world  and  to  forsake  its  task  of  world- 
redemption  in  favour  of  world-renunciation.  It 
has  often  abandoned  the  search  for  a  “  new  earth 
in  which  dwelleth  righteousness,”  and  has  rather 
fixed  its  hopes  only  on  another  world  beyond  and 
other  than  this.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  it  has  not 
seldom  allowed  the  world  to  secularise  it  and  to 
taint  its  faith  with  cynicism,  fatalism  and  apathy. 


THE  NEW  CREATION 


81 


And,  in  particular,  it  has  been  infected  in  no  little 
measure  by  the  materialist  philosophy  whose  pres¬ 
tige,  at  its  height  in  the  middle  of  last  century,  is 
only  now  waning.  We  must  again  reserve  the  con¬ 
sideration  of  this  philosophy  for  another  chapter. 
W e  will  only  point,  here,  to  the  strangulation  of  the 
faith  of  Christendom,  by  a  view  of  the  world 
which  exalted  rigid  uniformity  and  iron  necessity 
and  left  no*  room  for  new  and  unpredicted 
phenomena. 

Everything  in  Christianity  turns  upon  the  Resur¬ 
rection.  Acceptance  of  the  fact  of  Resurrection 
results  partly  from  the  worth  of  the  evidence  for  it, 
partly  from  men’s  verification  of  the  faith  of  Jesus 
and  their  knowledge  of  Him  as  their  living  and 
victorious  Lord.  But  there  is  a  third  factor  also: 
it  is  a  view  of  the  world  which  does  not  disallow 
the  possibility  of  new  creation.  If  such  is  disal¬ 
lowed,  it  follows  that  men  turn  from  the  event  or 
gloss  it  over  and  do  what  they  can  without  it. 

What  is  left  without  it?  Something  certainly. 
There  is  the  selfless  faith  and  adventurous  heroism 
of  Jesus.  His  life,  even  though  it  ended  on  the 
Cross  in  failure,  is  a  glory  on  the  page  of  history. 
Let  those*  who  will  not  or  cannot  go  further  than 
belief  in  Him  as  man,  who,  like  others,  died  and 
was  done  with — let  them  act  up  to  the  utmost  to 
the  inspiration  of  His  example. 

Granted,  then,  that  something  is  left;  neverthe¬ 
less,  it  is  but  little.  For  Jesus,  trusting  utterly  and 
yet  tragically  done  to  death,  leaves  only  intensified 
the  problem  of  God,  silent  and  inactive  in  face  of 


82  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


human  agony.  And  He  leaves  too  intensified  the 
problem  of  man. 

For  men  found  His  example  inimitable  and  His 
teaching  beyond  fulfilment.  They  realised  that 
they  were  not  Jesus.  They  were  left  by  Him  in 
moral  impotence  and  despair.  If  something  is  left, 
it  is  little  to  set  against  the  deepened  darkness  of 
life’s  twin-mystery. 


* 


XII 

THE  WORLD  IN  CHAINS 

THE  Resurrection,  as  we  have  said,  was  the 
response  of  the  nature  of  things  to-  the  faith 
and  self-giving  of  Jesus.  The  vital  ques¬ 
tion  therefore  is  whether  the  nature  of  things  ad¬ 
mits  of  such  a  response? 

For  centuries  the  men  who  have  studied  nature 
have  been  doubtful  of  the  possibility  of  a  new  cre¬ 
ation.  And  in  the  last  century  many  of  such  men 
grew  positive  that  that  which  God  wrought  in 
Christ  when  He  raised  Him  from  the  dead  (Ephe¬ 
sians  i  :20)  was  a  sheer  impossibility.  For  their 
minds  were  swayed  by  the  view  of  the  world  which 
is  called  Naturalism.  Perhaps  the  more  accurate 
name  is  Materialism.  It  is  the  view  which  denies 
the  reality  of  anything  beyond  what  can  be  known 
by  the  senses. 

It  claims  to  explain  and  to  explain  away  the  spir¬ 
itual  in  terms  of  the  physical.  It  claims  that  the 
physical  is  governed  by  iron  laws  of  causal  neces¬ 
sity  in  the  operation  of  which  there  is  no  room  for 
new  effects.  It  has  thus  been  defined  by  a  great 
authority:  “  Naturalism  has  come  to  mean  the  type 
of  theory  which  so  emphasises  the  continuity  be¬ 
tween  man  and  the  non-human  nature  from  which 
he  springs  as  to  minimise,  if  not  entirely  to  deny, 
any  difference  between  them.  It  denies  any  central 


83 


84  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


significance  to  human  life  in  the  play  of  the  cos¬ 
mic  forces.  Consciousness  is  an  incident  or  acci¬ 
dent  of  the  universe  which  does  not  throw  any 
special  illumination  upon  its  ultimate  nature.  It 
arises  and  passes  away;  the  physical  basis  of  things 
remains.” 

Now  Naturalism  is  not  an  “  ism  ”  which  is  the 
private  property  of  a  select  number  of  scholars  and 
students.  It  has  got  into  the  air  which  everyone 
breathes.  It  has  formed  the  everyday  habit  of 
mind  of  plain  men,  who,  while  they  do  not  deny  the 
reality  of  things  spiritual,  are  more  certain  of 
things  material,  and  in  consequence  actually  live 
their  lives  upon  the  basis  of  “  Let  us  eat  and  drink, 
for  to-morrow  we  die.” 

In  the  war  there  was  a  wonderful  and  glorious 
exhibition  of  faith  in  the  reality  of  that  spiritual 
life  which  physical  death  cannot  destroy.  In 
“  splendid  action  on  the  edge  of  things  ”  men 
showed  how  strong  was  their  instinctive  hold  upon 
the  life  beyond  death.  Yet  I  think  there  was  more 
of  ingrained  instinct  than  conscious  conviction  in 
souls  of  the  fighting  men.  (I  speak  generally  and 
fully  allow  for  many  qualifications  and  exceptions. ) 
I  remember  the  philosophy  of  Naturalism,  which 
sees  in  the  end  of  the  body  the  extinction  of  the 
soul — the  philosophy  which  I  repeat  has  greatly 
swayed  the  common  mind — finding  dramatic  ex¬ 
pression  in  the  last  words  of  a  London  lad  as  he 
was  just  leaving  the  front-line  trenches  at  Armen- 
tieres  on  a  stretcher  mortally  wounded:  “Well, 
chaps,  I  shall  soon  be  pushing  up  the  daisies !  ” 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAINS 


85 


Such  a  philosophy  was  at  a  discount  in  the 
trenches  or  in  the  air,  and  yet  it  was  not  absent 
from  men’s  minds  even  there.  It  found  ready 
expression  in  the  naturally  reckless  life  of  fight¬ 
ing*  men  on  leave.  It  was  very  prevalent  be¬ 
hind  the  front,  where  the  air  was  heavily  charged 
with  materialism.  And,  as  I  have  said,  the 
peace-life  of  the  world  is  widely  directed  by  the 
practical  philosophy  of  “  Gather  ye  rosebuds  while 
ye  may.” 

It  is  worth  while,  therefore,  to  consider  the 
claims  of  Naturalism,  and  at  any  rate  to  point  to 
its  history.  As  we  shall  indicate,  science,  which  in 
the  latter  half  of  last  century  seemed  as  a  gaoler 
to  imprison  life  in  the  mechanical  prison  of  physical 
necessity,  is  now  breaking  the  prison  bars.  It  is 
within  itself  repudiating  materialism  and  is  cham¬ 
pioning  the  “  autonomy  of  life  ”  (see  next  chap¬ 
ter)  and  the  new-creative  nature  of  things.  We 
live,  in  fact,  at  the  dawn  of  a  new  age,  which  will 
bring  to  the  world,  if  it  will  accept  it,  a  glorious 
measure  of  spiritual  liberation.  But  this  is  hardly 
known  as  yet  except  to  the  few.  And  the  popular 
mind  (which  is  perhaps  always  a  generation  be¬ 
hind  the  minds  of  the  great  thinkers  and  discov¬ 
erers,  though  always  influenced  by  them,  sooner 
or  later)  is  still  held  down  by  the  materialistic  view 
of  life. 

And,  further,  it  is  probably  true  to  say  that,  all 
the  world  over,  men  are  doubtful  or  sceptical 
whether  a  scientific  knowledge  of  the  processes  of 
nature  are  compatible  with  the  central  stress  which 


86  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


Christianity,  still-born  but  for  the  Resurrection, 
lays  on  the  supernatural.1 

There  is  no  doubt  that  for  many  generations 
there  has  been  a  painful  discord  in  the  civilised 
world  between  men’s  heads  and  their  hearts,  be¬ 
tween  their  scientific  knowledge  of  reality  and  their 
religious  hopes  and  faith.  The  discord  came  to  a 
head  last  century  in  Huxley.  Witness  his  sense  of 
the  moral  indifference  of  nature:  his  denunciation 
of  the  cosmic  process  owing  to  “  the  unfathomable 
injustice  of  the  nature  of  things  ” :  his  insistence 
on  the  sheer  breach  between  ethical  man  and  pre¬ 
human  nature :  his  calling  nature  the  “  headquar¬ 
ters  of  the  enemy  ” :  his  phrase  “  the  gladiatorial 
theory  of  existence  ” :  his  conviction  that  it  is  im¬ 
possible  to  reconcile  the  universe  with  men’s  moral 
ideals  and  spiritual  aspirations.2 

There  was  a  time  in  the  Christian  era  when  this 
discord  did  not  exist.  In  the  Middle  Ages  “  sys¬ 
tematised  knowledge  seemed  to  support  the  con¬ 
temporary  religious  outlook — science  and  religion 
spoke  with  one  voice.”  But  that  time  is  past  and  a 


1  The  subject  to  be  discussed  is  far  too  big  to  be  properly 
handled  here.  So  I  venture  to  point  readers  who  are  inter¬ 
ested  in  this  vital  subject  to  one  or  two  books.  First,  a  popu¬ 
lar  book,  “Religion  and  Science:  From  Galileo  to  Bergson,” 
by  J.  C.  Hardwick.  Secondly,  two  harder  books:  (1)  “The 
Idea  of  God,”  by  Professor  Pringle-Pattison,  being  the  Gif¬ 
ford  Lectures  for  1912  and  1913;  Lectures  III.,  IV.,  V.,  and 
VI.  in  the  first  series  are  the  ones  more  especially  to  be  read. 
(2)  Dr.  J.  S.  Haldane’s  “  Mechanism,  Life  and  Personality.” 
Thirdly,  Bishop  Gore’s  “  Belief  in  God.” 

2  See  his  famous  Lecture  at  Oxford  in  1893  on  Evolution 
and  Ethics,  which  has  been  called  “  The  Swan-song  of 
Naturalism.” 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAINS 


87 


new  world  has  come  into  being.  Its  beginnings  are 
not  recent  but  lie  back  in  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
fathers  of  the  modern  world  are  not  Darwin  or 
Huxley,  but  Copernicus  (1473),  Galileo  (1564), 
Kepler,  a  contemporary  of  Galileo,  Francis  Bacon 
(1561),  Newton  (1642),  and  so  forth.  It  was 
through  the  work  of  such  men  that  the  old-world 
scheme,  about  which  science  and  religion  were  in 
harmony,  broke  up,  never  to  return.  That  world- 
scheme  was  based  on  the  physics  of  Aristotle  and 
the  Ptolemaic  astronomy.  It  formed  a  coherent 
framework  for  Biblical  world-notions.  Its  view  of 
the  world  was  static.  It  made  the  earth  the  centre 
of  the  universe  and  made  man  therefore  of  central 
importance  to  the  universe.  But  it  looked  upon 
man  as  thrust  into  the  material  world  from  above, 
having  a  soul  and  mind  separate  from  its  physical 
processes. 

As  against  such  a  scheme  the  development  of 
science  since  Copernicus  may  roughly  be  said  to 
have  established  the  infinite  vastness  of  the  uni¬ 
verse  in  time  and  in  space,  the  dependence  of  man’s 
spiritual  and  mental  life  upon  his  physical  mechan¬ 
ism,  and  the  continuity  of  all  that  is  human  with 
pre-human  nature.  For  at  least  four  centuries  the 
accumulated  labours'  of  men,  who  have  explored 
the  recesses  of  nature,  have  tended  to  account  for 
the  world  as  a  material  order,  standing  by  itself, 
with  all  its  phenomena  explicable  in  terms  of  the 
interaction  of  physical  and  chemical  elements,  with 
everything  within  it  under  the  sway  of  rigid  neces¬ 
sity  and  uniformity. 


88  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


There  must  be  few  educated  people  who  have  not 
felt  in  some  degree  at  least  the  sense  of  homeless¬ 
ness  and  desolation  engendered  by  the  sheer  vast¬ 
ness  of  the  universe,  on  the  edge  of  which  the  earth 
as  a  minor  planet  “  spins  like  a  fretful  midge.”  In 
such  a  universe  man  seems  to  have  dwindled  to 
nothing.  His  consciousness,  with  its  thoughts  and 
hopes  and  prayers,  have  appeared  to  be  but  insig¬ 
nificant  by-products  of  the  physical  mechanism  of 
his  brain — they  have  been  likened  to  the  whistle 
thrown  off  by  the  material  apparatus  of  an  engine. 
His  whole  being  has  appeared  to  have  been  ex¬ 
plained  by  derivation  from  animal  nature,*  and, 
thus  accounted  for  in  origin,  he  has  been  depicted 
as  surrounded  by  a  natural  order  cruel  and  waste¬ 
ful  in  its  working,  deaf  and  blind  to  his  ideals, 
and  governed  by  the  law  of  inexorable  and  callous 
necessity. 

True,  all  down  the  centuries  there  have  never 
been  wanting  protests  from  within  the  world  of 
science  itself  to  this  soul-destroying  view  of  life. 
The  heart  of  man  too  has  risen  “  like  a  man  in 
wrath  .  .  .  against  the  freezing  season’s  colder 
part  ”  and  has  refused  to  acquiesce  in  its  own 
dethronement. 

Nevertheless,  far  and  wide,  men  have  been 
haunted  by  the  sense  that  there  is  a  chasm  fixed 
between  the  world  as  known  by  science  and  all  their 
dearest  longings  and  values.  And  all  the  while 
scientific  knowledge  has  armed  man  with  ever- 
multiplied  means  of  exploiting  nature  for  purposes 
of  gain.  And  the  prestige  of  learning  has  en- 


THE  WORLD  IN  CHAINS 


89 


couraged  the  acquisitive  heart  of  man  to  think, 
and  to  live  consistently  with  the  thought,  that  his 
life  consists  in  the  abundance  of  things  which  he 
possesses. 


XIII 


THE  WORLD  SET  FREE 

HE  accumulated  effort  of  four  centuries  of 
scientific  inquiry  tended  to  imprison  the 


life  and  soul  of  men  within  the  walls  of 
materialism. 

This  is  no  partisan  statement  on  the  part  of  a 
cleric.  It,  or  its  equivalent,  has  been  stated  by 
competent  men  from  a  point  of  view  quite  other 
than  clerical.  Listen  to  the  eminent  Cambridge 
philosopher  and  mathematician.  “  That  man  is  the 
product  of  causes  which  had  no  prevision  of  the  end 
they  were  achieving;  that  his  origin,  his  growth, 
his  hopes  and  fears,  his  loves  and  his  beliefs,  are 
but  the  outcome  of  accidental  collocations  of  atoms ; 
that  no  fire,  no  heroism,  no  intensity  of  thought 
and  feeling,  can  preserve  an  individual  life  beyond 
the  grave:  that  all  the  labours  of  the  ages,  all  the 
devotion,  all  the  inspiration,  all  the  noonday  bright¬ 
ness  of  human  genius,  are  destined  to<  extinction  in 
the  vast  death  of  the  solar  system,  and  that  the 
whole  temple  of  Man’s  achievement  must  inevitably 
be  buried  beneath  the  debris  of  a  universe  in  ruins 
— all  these  things,  if  not  quite  beyond  dispute,  afe 
yet  so  nearly  certain  that  no  philosophy  which  re¬ 
jects  them  can  hope  to  stand.  Only  within  the 
scaffolding  of  these  truths,  only  on  the  firm,  foun¬ 
dation  of  unyielding  despair,  can  the  sours  habita- 


90 


THE  WORLD  SET  FREE 


91 


tion  henceforth  be  safely  built  ”  (Bertrand  Russell, 
“Philosophical  Essays ,  The  Free  Man's  Wor¬ 
ship T  p.  60). 

This  is  the  grim  and  impressive  voice  of  modern 
stoicism,.  It  is  the  point  of  view  of  a  man  who  is 
driven  to  defy  the  universe  and  to  build  out  of  the 
fabric  of  his  own  ideals  a  shelter  for  his  soul. 
There  is  a  magnificent  courage  about  it.  But  its 
fatal  weakness  is  its  joyless  lack  of  humour.  The 
stoic  is  the  tense  and  solemn  bearer  of  the  burden  of 
existence.  In  the  calm  of  his  “  unyielding  despair  ” 
laughter  dies.  Hence  his  system  is  never  of  any 
use  to  the  mass  of  men,  who  always  have  the  in¬ 
stinct  (see  the  men  at  the  front)  that  a  laughterless 
view  of  life  stands  self-condemned.  They  will  al¬ 
ways  leave  that  sort  of  thing  to  the  “  high-brows,” 
while  they  themselves  go  for  a  “  short  life  and  a 
gay  one.”  But  at  any  rate  such  a  stoic  as  Russell 
has  faced  the  facts  and  looked  into  the  dark  and 
made  the  very  gloomiest  report  on  what  he  has 
seen.  He  represents  the  darkest  hour.  He  sug¬ 
gests  that  there  must  be  a  dawn. 

The  same  is  true  of  Nietzsche.  He  worked  out 
naturalism  on  its  ethical  side  to-  its  logical  conclu¬ 
sion.  In  England,  at  any  rate  during  the  Victorian 
age,  the  full  meaning  of  naturalistic  philosophy  was 
a  good  deal  diluted  and  disguised  by  the  fact  that 
its  chief  champions  were  such  staunch  and  devoted 
moralists.  Great  thinkers  and  scientists  might 
glory  in  the  name  of  agnostic,  but  their  agnosti¬ 
cism  left  their  Christian  morality  unimpaired.  It 
made  them  all  the  more  jealous  and  zealous  for 


92  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


Christian  ethics.  The  latter  seemed  to  them  to 
stand  quite  independently  of  the  historical  truth  of 
Christianity. 

It  was  the  work  of  Nietzsche — and  on  the  whole 
we  should  be  grateful  to  him — to  tear  off  from 
naturalism  the  disguise  of  moral  idealism  and  to 
expose  it  in  all  its  brutal  nakedness.  He  passion¬ 
ately  denounced  Christian  ethics  as  morbid  and 
servile.  He  exalted  the  ethic  of  ruthless  self- 
assertion.  His  doctrine  went  like  wine  to  the  head 
of  younger  Europe.  It  was  powerfully  operative 
in  producing  the  Great  War. 

And  now,  just  when  all  this  long-accumulating 
mass  of  materialistic  thought  has  yielded  its  worst 
results  and  bidden  fair  to  lay  civilisation  in  the  dust, 
scientific  thinkers  are  (and  have  been  for  some 
time)  pleading  for  a  wholesale  revision  of  natural¬ 
ism.  They  are  witnesses  to  the  passing  of  the 
night  and  the  dawning  of  a  new  day. 

The  turning-point  in  this  emancipating  move¬ 
ment  has  been  the  successful  fight  which  has  been 
fought  within  the  world  of  science  for  the  rights  of 
biology  (the  science  of  life)  over  against  physics 
and  chemistry  (the  sciences  of  non-living  bodies 
and  elements).  Science,  ever  since  the  days  of 
Newton  and  his  predecessors,  has  been  largely 
dominated  by  mathematics  and  physics.  As  such 
it  has  been  concerned  to  explain  living  phenomena 
in  terms  of  simple  mechanical  interaction  between 
material  particles.  In  so  doing  it  has  made  mar¬ 
vellous  discoveries  and  has  permanently  enriched 
the  world.  Its  method  is  perfectly  valid  so  far  as 


THE  WORLD  SET  FREE 


93 


it  goes.  For  instance,  it  is  quite  legitimate  for  a 
mathematician  for  his  purpose  to  treat  a  number 
of  different  things — say  the  leaves  on  a  tree — as  so 
many  identical  units.  But  in  so  doing  he  leaves  out 
of  account  the  individuality  of  each  leaf.  Simi¬ 
larly  it  is  legitimate  for  the  physicist  in  studying  a 
living  organism  to  study  its  parts  as  though  they 
were  parts  of  a  machine.  But  in  so*  doing  he  leaves 
out  of  account  the*  principle  of  life  in  the  organism, 
owing  to  which  its  parts  are  not  just  externally 
united,  as  in  a  machine,  but  are  essentially  bound 
together  in  the  life  of  the  organism  as  a  whole. 

Thus  biology  has  vindicated  the  internal  auton¬ 
omy  and  freedom  of  organic  life  as  against  its 
sheer  external  determination  by  mechanical  neces¬ 
sity.  Much  has  been  learned  from  the  endeavour  to 
understand  the  mechanism  of  living  organisms. 
But,  to  quote  Professor  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  to  call 
that  which  is  “  self-stoking,  self -re framing,  self- 
preservative,  self-adjusting,  self-increasing,  self- 
reproducing  ”  a  machine  is  an  abuse  of  language ! 

Further,  this  that  is  true  on  the  levels  of  plants 
and  animals  acquires  a  multiplied  importance  when 
the  level  of  human  personality  and  consciousness  is 
reached.  There,  again,  enormous  advances  have 
been  achieved  by  science  in  its  task  of  understand¬ 
ing  human  life,  by  dint  of  leaving  out  of  account 
the  principle  of  personality,  with  its  sovereign 
function  of  choice,  and  of  treating  the  human 
organism  as  only  a  complex  machine.  But  those 
who  have  used  this  method  have  realised  its  limita¬ 
tions.  It  is  valid  so  far,  but  not  all  the  way. 


94  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


For,  in  studying  parts  of  human  nature,  science 
has  realised  that  those  parts  never  exist  at  all  ex¬ 
cept  as  unified  by  the  self-determining  personality 
of  a  human  being.  It  is  useful  and  instructive  to 
study  human  thought  as  it  were  from  below — that 
is,  in  terms  of  cerebral  process.  But  the  explana¬ 
tion  of  thought  merely  as  the  interaction  of  cells  in 
the  brain  no  more  accounts  for  thought  than  the 
rubbing  of  horsehair  on  catgut  accounts  for  a 
sonata  of  Beethoven.  The  material  or  physical 
mechanism  in  either  case  is  the  means  of  self- 
expression  used  by  that  which  is  more  than  it, 
namely,  the  spirit  of  man. 

There  are  many  other  things  which  have  con¬ 
tributed  to  the  breaking  by  scientific  thought  of  the 
prison  which  it  itself  erected.  There  is,  for  in¬ 
stance,  the  criticism  of  the  conception  of  law 
whereby  it  has  been  realised  that  laws  are  not  as  it 
were  iron  bands  in  nature,  but  are  the  ways  in 
which  the  human  mind  describes  and  sums  up  the 
order  of  nature.  There  is  order  and  continuity  in 
nature  which  it  is  man’s  supreme  privilege  to  un¬ 
derstand,  but  it  is  not  an  order  fast-bound  by 
necessity.  There  is  every  reason  to  expect  that,  as 
we  say,  the  sun  will  rise  to-morrow,  or  that  the 
grass  will  be  green  next  spring.  But  there  is  no 
absolute  necessity  that  it  will  be  so.  For  the  whole 
natural  order  is  in  process  of  creative  growth,  and 
therefore  the  past  does  not  entirely  determine  the 
present  and  future.  There  is  room  for  the  new  and 
the  unpredictable. 

All  this  is  the  more  true  to  the  facts  as  one 


THE  WORLD  SET  FREE 


95 


passes  upward  through  the  hierarchy  of  nature 
from  the  inorganic  to  the  organic,  from  the  organic 
to  the  sentient,  from  the  sentient  to  the  level  of 
free,  self-conscious,  self-determining  personality. 

There  is,  again,  the  revolutionary  change  which 
has  come  over  the  whole  sphere  of  physics.  Here 
the  materialist  theory  of  matter,  as  consisting  of  so 
many  indivisible  and  indestructible  atoms,  has  given 
way  to  amazing  and  fascinating  theories,  according 
to  which  matter  is  reduced  tO'  intangible  electricity 
or  unknowable  ether.  Here  the  layman  can  only 
gape  open-mouthed.  But  he  can  listen  to  Lord  Bal¬ 
four  when  he  says :  “We  know  too  much  about 
matter  to  be  materialists.” 

Thus,  in  accordance  with  these  rude  and  crude 
hints,  we  can  rejoice  in  the  turning  by  science  from 
an  attitude  of  imprisoning  denial  to  that  of  liberat¬ 
ing  affirmation  of  the  world  as  plastic  and  elastic; 
as  in  process  creative  of  new  effects  ;  as  intelligible, 
not  from  below,  but  from  above;  as  to  be  estimated 
not  in  the  light  of  its  origins,  but  of  its  end;  as 
governed  in  all  its  wonderful  mechanism  by  spirit. 
Evolutionary  science,  which  tended  at  first  to  make 
for  an  all-engulfing  materialism  and  for  the  nat¬ 
uralising  of  man,  has  come  to  humanise  nature,  and 
to  re-enthrone  personality  and  reason  as  the  key  to 
the  true  nature  of  things.  It  has  re-instated  man 
— and  his  spiritual,  rational  and  moral  values — 
as  the  measure  of  the  whole  vast  panorama  of 
existence. 

Once  more,  then,  we  are  given  a  world  capable  of 
responding  to  the  transforming  challenge  of  ere- 


96  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


ative  spirit.  Who  can  tell  how  it  would  or  would 
not  react  to  the  faith  and  love  of  Jesus  Christ.  He 
interpreted  the  world  as  the  Father’s  world,  as  still 
in  the  making,  as  the  scene  of  the  Father’s  ceaseless 
and  emancipating  energies.  He  staked  everything 
upon  the  reality  of  the  living  God.  In  the  Resur¬ 
rection  we  see  the  response  to  His  faith. 

Neither  philosophy  nor  science  has  any  right  to 
deny  its  possibility. 


XIV 

THE  GOOD  NEWS 


THE  Resurrection,  then,  was  the  ratification 
of  the  faith  of  Jesus.  As  the  centre  of  the 
Gospel — the  Good  News — it  can  never  be 
understood  except  in  the  light  of  what  the  world 
was  to  Jesus.  The  world  to  Him  was  still  in  the 
making,  and  man,  too,  in  its  midst,  still  in  the 
making.  All  was  in  the  creative  hands  of  the  living 
God.  The  whole  visible  order  of  existence  was 
enveloped  by  a  world  of  spiritual  energy  and  life 
ready  to  be  released  at  the  touch  of  sacrificial  faith 
and  love.  There  was,  as  it  were,  a  feast  spread  for 
those  who  could  respond  to  the  invitation  and  come 
and  partake.  There  were  recovery,  deliverance, 
healing  both  of  body  and  soul  immediately  avail¬ 
able.  And  all  this  because  of  the  Father  and  be¬ 
cause  it  was  His  world. 

Nothing,  indeed,  could  be  further  from  Jesus’ 
interpretation  of  life  than  the  idea  of  God  as  rest¬ 
ing  in  some  sabbatical  peace  in  heaven,  an  external 
Spectator  to  life’s  strange  drama,  an  Architect  of 
a  system  which  He  had  fashioned  and  left  to  itself 
to  run  automatically,  a  Stranger  occasionally  and 
arbitrarily  intervening  from  outside  in  a  sphere 
normally  beyond  His  care.  Rather  life  to  Jesuk 
was  wonderful,  dramatic,  potential,  shot  through 
and  through  with  new  possibilities,  because  over 


97 


98  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


against  men — wrapping  them  round  and  sustaining 
them — was  the  constant  and  immediate  and  active 
Presence  of  the  Being,  who  had  made  them  for 
Himself,  to  be  sharers  as  sons  in  His  purposes  of 
unvarying  and  inexhaustible  love. 

So  Jesus  said  and  so  He  lived.  And  in  the  end 
He  found  no  one  able  or  willing  to  share  His  faith. 
He  looked  for  brethren  who  with  Him  should  re¬ 
spond  as  sons  to  the  Father,  should  partake  with 
Him  of  the  feast.  But  in  the  end  He  was  left 
brotherless.  In  the  end  He  was  alone  at  the  feast. 
Nothing  kept  Him  back,  though  almost  anything 
sufficed  to  keep  others.  Apathy,  scepticism,  igno¬ 
rance,  half-heartedness  met  his  invitation.  Selfish¬ 
ness,  antagonism  to  change,  jealousy,  closed  in  on 
Him.  Faithlessness  and  fearfulness  betrayed  and 
denied  Him.  But  nothing  kept  Him  back  from 
yielding  to  the  Father  the  entire  response  of  a  son. 
So  He  went  alone,  as  we  have  seen,  into  the  dark¬ 
ness — the  darkness  of  Calvary,  where  the  Father 
seemed  to  be  not,  where  the  pathetic  disaccord  of 
reality  with  human  trust  and  hope  seemed  to  reach 
its  climax. 

But  He  rose  again.  The  pent-up  love  of  the 
Father  made  answer.  All  that  Jesus  said  was  there 
in  the  Father’s  hands  to  be  given  to  His  children 
(and  not  to  be  forced  on  them  or  else  they  would 
not  be  treated  as  free  children)  was  released.  The 
fatherly  nature  of  things  responded.  The  hidden 
springs  of  life  were  set  free.  The  Father  vindi¬ 
cated  the  faith  of  Him  who  died,  and  raised  Him 
from  the  dead. 


THE  GOOD  NEWS 


99 


Hence  the  essence  of  the  Good  News  is  about 
God.  It  is  not  just  about  Jesus.  It  is  about  that 
which  Jesus  in  His  crucial  experiment — by  His 
supreme  venture  of  faith — had  put  in  all-decisive 
issue.  It  is  about  the  Father  in  whom  He  had 
trusted.  It  is  about  the  world  as  the  Father’s 
world.  It  is  about  the  ultimate  nature  of  things. 
The  Good  News  is  that  God  is  love. 

That  is  the  first  thing  about  Christianity  to  re¬ 
member  and  never  to  forget.  It  is  about  God. 
Jesus  had  striven  to  link  those  who  had  followed 
Him  to  the  living  reality  of  God.  But  they  could 
not  grasp  nor  reach  up  to  it.  Yet  in  the  Resurrec¬ 
tion  the  unattainable  reached  them.  The  truth, 
which  had  been  too  good  to  be  true,  laid  hold  on 
them.  That  and  nothing  else  gave  them  a  gospel. 
That  and  nothing  else  can  be  the  Gospel.  For  Jews 
there  had  ever  been  one  all-dwarfing  question — the 
question  of  God.  And  so  with  other  peoples  in 
greater  or  lesser  degree.  No  Jew  would  ever  have 
carried  out  to  the  world  good  news  about  Jesus  if 
that  good  news  had  left  unanswered  the  question 
of  God.  Nor  would  others  have  taken  any  lasting 
notice  of  it.  For  it  would  have  left  them  still  in 
the  ultimate  darkness,  still  knocking  at  the  gate  of 
the  innermost  shrine,  still  threatened  by  funda¬ 
mental  doubts  and  fears,  still  in  bondage  to 
themselves. 

But  the  New  Testament  rings  and  pulses  with 
no  mere  gospel  about  Jesus.  It  is  a  Jewish  book. 
Its  dynamic  is  the  revelation  of  God,  responsive 
to  the  faith  of  the  Crucified.  Its  world-changing 


100  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


power  springs  from  the  answer  by  God  to  the 
questions  about  Himself,  felt  more  acutely  by  the 
Jews  than  by  any  other  people,  and  finally  gathered 
up  and  epitomised  in  the  Cross  of  Christ. 

And  yet  the  gospel,  while  it  is  about  God  is  also 
about  Jesus;  while  it  is  about  the  Father  it  is  also 
about  the  Son.  What  raised  to  its  highest  power 
the  question  of  God  was  the  doing  to  death  of 
Jesus.  That  had  left  nothing  to  be  done  by  His 
stricken  friends  but  the  burial  of  His  mangled 
corpse,  the  pitiful  last  offices,  the  helpless  bringing 
out  of  embalming  spices — all  that  broken  hearts 
find  to  do,  though  they  know  of  its  impotence  in 
face  of  the  finality  of  death. 

Everything  therefore  sprang  out  of  the  coming 
back  of  Jesus  in  risen  bodily  presence,  triumphant 
over  the  grave  of  death.  He  was  the  subject  of 
the  new  creative  act  of  God.  It  was  He  who  had 
been  imprisoned  and  overwhelmed  by  the  sin  and 
faithlessness  of  men.  It  was  His  body  which  was 
sealed  in  the  tomb,  wherein  were  buried  with  it 
the  hopes  that  He  had  raised.  I  cannot  believe 
that  there  is  any  relief  for  minds  which  are  troubled 
about  the  supernatural,  in  theories  which  try  to 
explain  the  Resurrection  in  terms  of  merely  spir¬ 
itual  vision  or  telepathy. 

Quite  true  we  do  not  know  what  exactly  is  meant 
by  the  risen  body  of  Christ.  That  is  because  it 
belongs  to  an  order  of  things  beyond  the  level  of 
our  normal  experience.  But  whatever  difficulty 
attaches  to  the  bodily  rising  of  Christ,  far  greater 
difficulty  surrounds  any  other  account  of  the  mat- 


THE  GOOD  NEWS 


101 


ter.  If  Jesus  had  died  and  gone  through  the  dark 
veil  of  death,  leaving  His  body  to  corruption,  no 
visionary  or  mystical  assurance  that  His  soul  had 
survived  death  would  have  made  any  difference  to 
His  followers.  No  conviction  that  all  was  well 
with  Him  could  have  healed  their  wounded  hearts. 
For  their  misery  and  agony  was  not  so  much  about 
Him,  as  about  the  Father  in  whom  He  had  trusted, 
and  about  themselves  who  had  failed  their  Master. 
They  were  re-made^ — begotten  again  as  Peter  says 
— by  the  act  of  God  which  raised  Jesus  from  the 
grave  and  restored  Him  bodily  to  them.  He  was 
given  back  to  them  out  of  the  silence  of  death.  The 
response  of  the  Father  was  the  return  to  His  lovers 
of  Him  whom  death  had  veiled  and  enveloped,  but 
who  was  now  revealed  in  victory  over  death.  What 
this  means  further,  we  shall  see  in  the  next  chapter. 

Here  we  will  only  add  a  word  which  needs  to 
be  added  to  words  so  insistent  on  the  all-importance 
of  the  Resurrection.  The  Resurrection  was,  and  is, 
no  sign  to  convince  the  incredulous.  The  Risen 
Lord  was  manifested  not  to  the  world  at  large  but 
to  those  who,  forsaking  all,  had  followed  Him  and 
had  been  with  Plim  in  His  temptations.  He  came 
back  to  those  who  had  tried  to  share  in  the  ad¬ 
venture  of  His  faith.  All  through  that  adventure 
He  had  steadfastly  and  under  violent  pressure  of 
temptation  refused  to  convince  men,  by  means  of 
signs,  of  that  to  which  He  yearned  to  win  them. 

Such  was,  indeed,  the  very  essence  of  His  temp¬ 
tation — to  sway  the  minds  of  men  by  the  exhibition 
of  those  powers  which  were  at  His  command.  He 


102  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


would  never  impair  the  freedom  of  those  to  whom 
He  appealed.  He  would  never  let  His  powers  be 
exploited  by  those  who  came  to  Him  merely  for 
health  or  ease.  He  set  out  to  win  the  free  response 
of  men,  not  the  adherence  of  a  crowd  mystified  by 
sensationalism.  He  knew  and  He  said  that  a  mere 
wonder,  while  it  might  startle  the  mind,  would  not 
win  the  heart.  “  Neither  will  they  be  persuaded 
though  one  rose  from  the  dead.” 

It  is  the  same  to-day.  No  argumentative  plead¬ 
ing,  whether  about  the  illegitimacy  of  scientific 
denial  or  about  the  sureness  of  the  witness  of  the 
disciples,  will  really  clinch  for  anyone  the  truth  of 
the  Resurrection.  It  will  only  come  home  to  those 
who  set  themselves  to  look  at  the  world  as  Jesus 
looked,  and  to  live  out  life  as  His  brethren  who 
share  in  His  faith.  That  means  putting  to  the 
proof  that  He  was  right  about  the  Father.  It 
means  partaking  of  the  feast  to  which  of  old  men 
would  not  come,  but  which  yet  was  spread  and  is 
still  spread.  In  other  words :  Those  who  do  the 
will  “  shall  know  of  the  doctrine.”  Those  who 
share  in  Christ’s  sufferings  are  convinced  of  the 
power  of  His  Resurrection. 


XV 


WHAT  THINK  YE  OF  CHRIST? 

E  come  now  to  the  question  of  the  Person 
of  Christ.  Hitherto'  we  have  not  viewed 


Plim  dogmatically.  We  did  not  view  Him 
from  the  start  through  the  lenses  of  the  doctrine  of 
the  Incarnation.  Rather  we  wished  to  do  full 
justice  to  the  truth,  which  many  have  felt  to  have 
been  diminished  and  obscured  by  dogma,  namely, 
the  truth  of  His  manhood. 

But,  as  has  been  seen,  the  more  rigorously  every 
assumption  other  than  that  Jesus  was  a  man  among 
men  is  excluded,  the  more  plainly  does  it  emerge 
that  He  brought  to  a  crisis  the  question  not  just  of 
Himself,  but  the  question  of  the  Father.  Plis  Per¬ 
son,  in  other  words,  is  entirely  bound  up  with  His 
belief  in  God  and  with  the  view  of  the  world  which 
flowed  from  that  belief.  He  acted  on  that  belief, 
and  His  belief  was  ratified.  The  nature  of  things 
corresponded  with  it.  This  meant  the  disclosure  of 
who  it  was  that  had  lived  and  believed  and  had 
died  for  His  belief.  The  act  which  revealed  the 
Father  as  all  that  Jesus  had  said  that  He  was,  was 
also  the  act  which  revealed  the  Sonship  of  Jesus. 
He  was  “  declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with 
power,  ...  by  the  resurrection  from  the  dead  ” 
(Romans  i  :4). 

The  life,  indeed,  of  Jesus  during  His  ministry 


103 


104  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


yields  no  answer  to  the  questions  that  it  raised.  If, 
in  the  spirit  of  denial,  men  look  upon  it  as  merely 
one  more  life  among  other  lives,  which  ended  (so 
far  as  this  world  is  concerned)  as  they  do  in  death, 
then  Jesus  becomes  the  supreme  raiser  of  unfulfilled 
hopes.  His  death,  too,  and  suffering  appear  as  but 
the  one  more  in  the  terribly  long  tale  of  unrelieved 
human  tragedies. 

But  if  the  life  and  death  be  viewed  in  the  light 
of  the  Resurrection  which  vindicated  the  faith  of 
Jesus,  then  they  become  charged  with  new  meaning. 
They  become  the  revelation  of  the  secret  of  exis¬ 
tence.  The  Father  is  seen  to  be  revealed  in  His 
Son.  The  Cross,  which  raised  in  finality  the 
problem  of  the  relationship  of  God  to  human  ex¬ 
perience,  is  seen  to  be  the  laying  bare  of  His  un¬ 
mitigated  and  all-suffering  love. 

This  is  the  essential  truth  of  the  Incarnation. 
It  has  somehow  been  obscured  and  overlaid.  It 
certainly  has  not  got  home  upon  the  mind  of  the 
average  man.  The  average  man  has  in  his  mind 
an  idea  of  God  which  is  uncoloured  by  Christ.  God 
is  one  thing  to  him  (and  a  hazy  enough  thing  too)  : 
Christ  is  another.  And  then  he  is  called  upon  to 
call  Christ  God.  And  more  or  less  explicitly  he 
refuses. 

But  the  main  truth  of  Christianity — the  very 
essence  of  the  Incarnation — is  something  deeper 
than  that  Christ  is  God.  It  is — God  is  Christ. 
The  first  question — the  bottom  question — is  not 
about  Christ  but  about  God.  That  is  the  question 
which  was  asked  and  answered  in  the  whole  fact 


WHAT  THINK  YE  OF  CHRIST? 


105 


of  Christ.  The  truth  of  the  Incarnation  does  not 
mean  nor  ever  has  meant  the  deifying  (or,  to  use 
the  technical  word,  the  apotheosis)  of  a  man.  It  is 
not  the  piling  of  attributes  of  deity  on  to  Jesus 
Christ,  as  though  those  attributes  were  fully  and 
sufficiently  known  apart  from  Christ.  Rather  it  is 
the  manifestation  of  what  God  is  in  terms  of  a 
human  life.  It  is  the  revelation  of  the  Father  in 
His  Son. 

If  men  ask,  as  under  the  terrible  pressure  of 
recent  experience  they  do  ask,  “  What  is  God  ? 
What  is  He  doing?  Where  is  His  love?  the  answer 
is — “Jesus  Christ;  that  is  what  God  is  and  ever 
has  been ;  that  is  what  He  is  doing ;  that  is  His 
love.”  The  self-giving  of  God  is  disclosed  in  the 
gift  of  Himself  in  His  Son.  Christ,  through 
whom  and  through  whose  sufferings  all  the  ques¬ 
tions  about  God  were  asked,  is  Himself  the  answer 
to  those  questions.  His  Cross,  raised  in  the  dark¬ 
ness  of  the  world’s  sin  and  confusion  and  in  face 
of  the  dreadful  silence  of  Heaven,  stands  for  ever 
ablaze  with  the  light  of  the  Father’s  love.  Just 
there  where  it  seemed  that  He  was  not,  there  where 
godlessness  seemed  triumphant,  God  revealed  Him¬ 
self.  There,  He  got  His  heart  out.  “  God  com- 
mendeth  His  love  towards  us  in  that,  while  we 
were  yet  sinners,  Christ  died  for  us.” 

It  must  not  be  thought  that  all  this  was  evident 
to  the  followers  of  Jesus  immediately  after  His 
Resurrection.  He  not  only  rose  and  returned  to 
them,  but  He  was  parted  from  them  and  entered 
on  His  reign  in  the  heavenly  places.  And  He  was 


106  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


not  only  “  to  the  right  hand  of  God  exalted,”  but 
He  came,  through  the  coming  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
to  be  for  ever  present  with  His  people  and  to  live 
in  them  and  share  His  Sonship  with  them.  But  the 
Resurrection  was  the  beginning  of  the  seizing  hold 
of  men's  hearts  by  the  Good  News  of  God.  There 
the  truth  to  which  they  could  not  reach  arrived  and 
began  to  possess  them. 

Now  it  was  from  the  standpoint  of  the  Good 
News  so  arriving  that  the  friends  of  Jesus  looked 
back  on  His  life  with  them.  By  itself,  as  we  have 
said,  the  life  led  nowhere.  It  had  led  them  indeed 
only  to  despair.  Their  intercourse  with  Him  had 
been  one  of  deepening  and  darkening  mystery. 
They  had  known  that  He  was  certainly  and  en¬ 
tirely  human,  sharing  fully  in  their  lot.  But  always 
Fie  had  been  something  more,  and  that  was  the 
mystery  about  Him.  Whenever  they  or  others  had 
naturally  assumed  that  He  was  merely  man  in  the 
ordinary  sense  of  the  word — whenever  anyone  had 
tried  to  confine  Him  within  the  limits  of  their 
normal  conceptions  of  humanity — He  had,  as  it 
were,  passed  through  the  web  of  those  assumptions 
and  conceptions. 

The  entire  humanness  of  Jesus  is,  for  instance, 
witnessed  to  by  the  confidence  of  His  neighbours  in 
Nazareth,  where  He  was  brought  up,  that  they 
knew  all  about  Him.  “  When  the  Sabbath  was 
come,  He  began  to  teach  in  the  synagogue:  and 
the  many  hearing  Him  were  astonished,  saying, 
Whence  hath  this  man  these  things?  What  is  the 
wisdom  that  is  given  unto  this  man,  and  what 


WHAT  THINK  YE  OF  CHRIST? 


107 


means  such  mighty  works  wrought  by  His  hands? 
Is  not  this  the  carpenter,  the  son  of  Mary,  and 
brother  of  James,  and  Joses,  and  Judas,  and 
Simon?  And  are  not  his  sisters  here  with  us? 
And  they  were  offended  in  Him  ”  (Mark  vi  :2,  3). 
But  the  very  degree  of  such  confidence  only  height¬ 
ened  the  fact  that  there  was  more  in  Him  than  they 
could  account  for. 

And  so  it  was  all  through  His  life.  He  was 
certainly  human,  but  he  was  something  more. 
What  that  was  only  came  out  through  the  triumph 
which  supervened  upon  His  failure.  It  was  re¬ 
vealed  through  the  Resurrection  and  through  what 
followed  upon  the  Resurrection.  Then  the  mys¬ 
tery  was  unveiled;  the  questions,  unanswered  at 
the  time,  were  answered.  The  disciples,  looking 
back,  knew  who  had  been  with  them.  They  still 
saw  Jesus,  their  brother,  their  faithful,  serving, 
joyful,  suffering  Master.  They  still  saw  the  Man. 
But  they  saw  the  Man,  no  longer  the  subject  of 
unresolved  questions  and  veiled  in  shadowing  mys¬ 
tery,  but  all  the  while  radiant  with  divine  Sonship. 
They  saw  His  humanity,  but  they  saw  His  deity 
shining  through  and  transfiguring  His  humanity. 

And  that  is  the  only  way  now  to  do  full  justice 
to  the  story  of  His  life  which  His  friends  have  left 
us.  We  can  try  to  realise  anew  the  utter  humanity 
of  Jesus  by  reading  the  Gospel  story  on  the  assump¬ 
tion  that  Fie  was  nothing  more  than  just  another 
man.  And  yet  the  further  that  assumption  is 
pressed  the  more  is  it  found  tO'  do  radical  violence 
to  the  story.  It  means  skipping  all  allusions  to  His 


108  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


powers,  the  possession  of  which  constituted  His 
special  temptation.  It  means  passing  over  all  the 
tremendous  passages  where  He  speaks  about  Him¬ 
self.  It  has  meant,  too,  again  and  again  in  modern 
scholarship,  the  breaking  up  of  the  Gospels  into 
fragments  and  the  currency  of  strange  and  irra¬ 
tional  doubts  as  to  whether  there  ever  was  such  a 
person  as  Jesus  on  the  earth. 

The  fact  is  that  the  life  of  Jesus  at  the  time  only 
proved  intelligible  in  the  light  of.  its  outcome,  and 
it  is  SO'  still.  Only  from  the  standpoint  of  faith  in 
Him  as  declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God  by  the 
Resurrection  does  the  record  of  the  ministry  co¬ 
here.  Otherwise  it  is  the  account  of  a  madman 
making  intolerable  claims : 1  His  claim  to  rein¬ 
terpret  the  divinely-sanctioned  Law:  His  claim  to 
forgive  sins:  His  claim  to'  judge  mankind,  and  so 
forth.  Read  those  claims  again  and  the  essential 
force  of  the  old  dilemma  comes  home.  “  Aut  Deus 
aut  non  bonus  homo  ”  (either  God  or  not  a  good 
man) — either  the  Son  or  a  deluded  fanatic. 

And  yet  He  was  entirely  man.  That  must  never 
be  lost  hold  of.  Scripture  is  never  afraid  to  say  so. 
It  sets  out  the  deity  in  the  humanity — God  coming 
down  to1  man  and  coming  all  the  way,  sharing  to 
the  last  in  human  experience,  drinking  the  cup  of 
human  suffering  to  the  dregs.  Once  the  life  is  seen 
to  be  the  revelation  of  the  divine  love,  then  no  in- 


1  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  keenest  intellect  of  our 
time  can,  in  the  end,  make  no  more  of  Jesus  Christ  than  call 
Him  a  madman :  see  G.  Bernard  Shaw’s  Introduction  to 
An  dr  ocles  and  the  Lion. 


WHAT  THINK  YE  OF  CHRIST? 


109 


sistence  on  the  human  limitations  and  humiliation 
of  Jesus  can  be  too  strong.  The  more  complete 
the  humiliation,  the  more  divine  is  the  sacrifice. 
The  narrower  the  limitations  accepted,  the  more 
limitless  the  love  which  accepted  them.  The  more 
we  “  Behold  the  Man,”  the  more  we  know  what 
that  little  word  “  so  ”  means  in  that  summary  of 
the  whole  matter — “  God  so  loved  the  world.” 


XVI 


GOD  AND  MAN 

THE  tremendous  and  central  truth  of  the 
Christian  faith  is  the  self-revelation  of  the 
One  God  in  terms  of  a  human  life.  It  has 
been  the  subject  of  much  controversy,  the  main 
track  of  which  is  marked  by  the  great  heresies. 
These  are  called  by  long  and  obscure  Greek  names, 
but  it  would  be  a  great  error  to  suppose  that  they 
are  dead  issues  to-day. 

The  truth  that  God  became  man — that  the  divine 
was  made  known  through  the  human — has  con¬ 
stantly  prompted  and  still  prompts  men  to  indulge 
in  two  kinds  of  one-sided  emphasis.  Some,  on  the 
one  hand,  exalt  the  divine  at  the  expense  of  the 
human.  This  has  been  exceedingly  common  in 
the  devotional  history  of  the  Church.  Others,  on 
the  other  hand,  exalt  the  human  to  the  exclusion 
of  the  divine.  This  certainly  has  been  the  chief 
tendency  of  thought  in  modern  times. 

Both  attitudes  spring  out  of  the  root  difficulty 
which  besets  everyone  in  more  or  less  degree  about 
the  Incarnation,  namely,  the  difficulty  of  believing 
that  “  Almighty  God  could  really  have  sacrificed 
Himself  to  the  uttermost  for  such  a  race  as  ours — 
that  God  can  really  be  as  loving  as  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  says  He  is.” 

But  there  are  several  reasons  to-day  for  being 


110 


GOD  AND  MAN 


111 


confident  that,  despite  the  mystery — the  “  seeing 
through  a  glass  darkly  ” — that  will  always  sur¬ 
round  this  central  secret  and  should  prompt  a  rev¬ 
erent  agnosticism  on  many  points,  the  truth  of  God 
in  Christ  will  repossess  the  heart  and  mind  of  the 
world. 

First  there  is  the  testimony  of  experience.  Many 
forces  contribute  to  drive  men  on  to  verify  for 
themselves  in  their  own  spiritual  experience  the 
reality  of  Christ  as  the  Way,  the  Truth,  and  the 
Life.  Prominent  among  them,  is  the  break-up  of 
the  sway  of  infallible  authority,  whether  of  Church 
or  of  Bible.  The  absence  of  hard-and-fast  certain¬ 
ties  impel  the  soul  to  clinch  the  truth  of  the  Gospel 
by  taking  Jesus  at  His  word.  And  there  are  num¬ 
bers: — they  are  the  very  soul  of  the  Church — who, 
as  a  result,  are  able  to  say :  “  We  believe,  not  be¬ 
cause  of  the  saying:  for  we  have  heard  Him  our¬ 
selves  and  know  that  this  is  indeed  the  Christ,  the 
Saviour  of  the  world.” 

Secondly,  there  is  the  deep  and  widely-prevailing 
perplexity  of  men  about  God.  In  previous  periods, 
notably  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  in  much  of 
the  nineteenth,  it  did  not  seem  to  many  thinkers 
that  it  mattered  vitally  if  they  did  throw  over  the 
truth  of  the  Incarnation.  They  thought  that  it  left 
their  belief  in  God — their  theism — secure  and  un¬ 
impaired.  They  thought,  too,  that  it  left  morals 
unaffected.  But  world-convulsions  have  rudely 
shaken  and  upset  such  complacency.  True,  there 
are  now  as  ever  powerful  philosophical  arguments 
for  a  belief  in  God.  Indeed,  thinkers  to-day  are 


112  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


reformulating  those  arguments  in  renewed  force. 
But  those  arguments  are  in  the  end  powerless  to 
deal  with  the  tremendous  character  of  reality,  un¬ 
less  they  allow  that  the  passion  and  agony  of  man¬ 
kind  is  met  by  the  passion  and  agony  of  God.  In 
other  words,  no  philosophy  which  leaves  out  the 
Cross  is  adequate  to  the  facts  of  life.  In  other 
words,  as  we  shall  see  later,  no  merely  Unitarian  or 
bare  theistic  position  is  comparable  in  rational 
power  to  the  truth  which  the  Trinitarian  formula 
strives  to  express. 

Thirdly,  there  is  the  failure  of  modern  scholar¬ 
ship,  despite  its  strenuous  and  prolonged  efforts,  to 
account  for  the  historical  fact  of  Jesus  Christ  in 
terms  of  mere  humanity,  as  being  merely  from 
below.  What,  according  to  the  title  of  a  famous 
book,  has  been  called  The  Quest  of  the  Historical 
Jesus — Jesus  as  only  a  man  among  men — has 
yielded  strangely  negative  and  disappointing  re¬ 
sults.  The  failure  of  criticism  to  furnish  any 
consistent  picture  of  Jesus  on  a  “  mere  man  ” 
theory  is  bringing  students  round  again  to  the 
truth  which  they  put  on  one  side — that  God  was  in 
Christ  reconciling  the  world  unto  Himself. 

Fourthly  (and  here  we  are  only  putting  in  an¬ 
other  way  what  has  been  said  in  the  two  previous 
paragraphs)  a  greater  readiness  prevails  to-day, 
than  for  many  days  past,  to  acknowledge  that  if 
Christianity  is  true  at  all,  it  is  the  central  truth — 
in  other  words,  that  it  is  the  revelation  both  of  what 
God  is  and  of  what  man  is.  Previously  men  have 
assumed  that  they  knew  what  was  meant  by  the 


GOD  AND  MAN 


113 


terms  God  and  man,  and  then  they  have  set  to  work 
to  account  for  the  Person  of  Christ  by  means  of 
them.  They  have  on  the  one  hand  labelled  Him 
with  their  preconceived  notions  of  deity :  on  the 
other  they  have  essayed  to  reduce  Him  to1  the  level 
of  their  preconceived  notions  of  humanity. 

But  to-day  the  question  what  is  meant  by  the 
term  God  is  precisely  the  painful  question;  while 
the  term  man,  it  is  being  recognised,  is  nothing 
fixed  nor  absolutely  determined.  For  man,  in  com¬ 
mon  with  the  whole  of  Nature,  is  still  in  the 
making,  is  not  enclosed  by  any  iron  circle  of  neces¬ 
sity,  but  is  the  central  figure  in  an  order  which 
allows  of  change,  transformation  and  new  possi¬ 
bility.  Both  as  regards  God  and  man,  we  may  say 
that  to-day  the  whole  creation  groans  and  travails 
with  an  added  intensity.  What  can  be  made  of 
God  in  face  of  the  long,  cruel  process  of  the  world’s 
evolution  ?  What  can  be  made  of  man,  so  different 
from  the  animals,  yet  so  akin;  SO'  conscious  of  a 
high  birthright,  so  impotent  to  realise  it;  so  made 
for  exaltation,  so  liable  to  degradation? 

The  answer  to  both  series  of  questions  is  Christ 
— Perfect  God  and  Perfect  Man,  as  the  old  formula 
puts  it.  It  is  God  coming  forth  in  His  Son  to  lay 
bare  His  heart  of  fatherly  and  suffering  love,  to 
seek  until  He  finds  the  souls  of  His  children.  It  is 
God  living  a  human  life,  under  all  the  conditions  of 
human  weakness  and  struggle,  and  transfiguring  it 
and  lifting  it  to  its  proper  height  of  free  and  loving 
sonship.  That  is  the  mystery  of  Christ,  of  which 
the  very  statement  evokes  the  sense  that  it  is  be- 


114  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


yond  statement,  which  yet  shall  again  win  and  save 
the  world. 

Two  things  need  to  be  said  further.  First,  it 
was  God  that  became  incarnate,  though  it  was  in 
the  Person  of  His  Son.  Often  people  have  har¬ 
boured  thoughts  which  implied  that  because  the 
Father  sent  the  Son,  Fie  remained  outside  the 
struggle  and  pain  which  the  Son  endured.  In 
the  language  of  the  war,  they  have  thought  that  the 
Father  remained  “  embusque  ”  in  safety  at  the  base 
in  Heaven,  while  the  Son  went  to  the  agony  of  the 
trenches — to  the  Cross.  But  the  war  should  have 
killed  such  ungenerous  thoughts.  For  any  loving 
mother  knows  that  it  would  have  been  far  easier  to 
have  gone  herself  to  the  war  than  to  have  sent  her 
beloved  son.  As  an  old  woman  said  once  of  “  God 
so  loved  the  world  ” — “  Ah,  that  was  love  indeed! 
I  can  think  of  myself  as  going  to  save  someone,  but 
I  can’t  imagine  how  I  could  give  my  only  son  to  die 
for  him.”  The  greater  love  was  shown  in  the 
sending  by  the  Father  of  His  Son.  The  Father’s 
was  the  “  hardest  part.” 

Secondly,  God,  in  becoming  man,  came  all  the 
way.  He  became  wholly  human  so  as  to  live  as 
man  with  limited  powers.  He  knew  what  it  was  to 
be  tired  and  hungry  and  ignorant  of  many  things. 
He  was  tried  in  all  points  like  as  we  are.  Though 
He  was  a  Son,  yet  He  learned  obedience  by  the 
things  which  He  suffered.  It  destroys  the  human¬ 
ity  of  the  Lord,  which  is  the  revelation  of  His 
deity,  to  suppose  anything  else.  He  came  down 
from  heaven,  and  He  came  all  the  way.  The  Om- 


GOD  AND  MAN 


115 


niscient  was  ignorant ;  the  Almighty  felt  tired ;  the 
Omnipresent  was  only  in  one  place  at  a  time;  the 
Perfect  One  knew  suffering  and  death — such  was 
and  is  the  entirety  of  His  love. 


XVII 


OMNIPOTENCE— I 


HAVING  reached  the  centre  of  the  Christian 
faith,  it  is  time  to  ask  what  is  the  bearing 
of  that  faith  on  the  burning  question  of 
the  Omnipotence  of  God? 

That  it  is  the  burning  question  of  our  time  needs 
no  long  labouring.  Its  popular  form;  during  the 
war  was,  “Why  does  God  not  stop  the  war?  If 
He  could,  He  would;  but  He  hasn’t,  so  He  can’t. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  He  can  and  won’t,  then  I’ve 
done  with  Him.” 

It  is  a  hoary  old  dilemma,  how  to  reconcile  the 
power  and  the  goodness  of  God.  It  is  not  a  dialec¬ 
tical  question.  It  has  been  scored  and  seared  on 
the  hearts  of  many  all  the  world  over.  That  has, 
without  doubt,  been  partly  due  to  the  obligation  by 
which  many  men  have  thought  they  were  bound  to 
ascribe  all  that  happens  in  the  world  to  the  will  of 
God,  on  the  ground  of  His  Almightiness. 

A  General  in  France  replied  to  the  plea  that  the 
ideal  aimed  at  by  the  League  of  Nations  was  in 
accordance  with  the  will  of  God :  “  Oh  well,  padre 
.  .  .  God!  .  .  .  and  this  war!  .  .  .  the  will  of 
God  ...  I  don’t  know.  .  .  .  Look  here,  if  I  met 
a  Belgian  who  had  had  his  house  burnt  by  the 
Huns,  his  son  shot  and  his  daughter  outraged,  I 
suppose  I  should  have  to  say  to  him,  ‘  It’s  the  will 


116 


OMNIPOTENCE 


117 


of  God.’  .  .  .  You  talk  about  God  .  .  .  the  war 
hasn’t  done  much  for  Him !  ”  And  with  that  he 
stumped  off  to  bed,  muttering  and  shaking  his 
head. 

That  is  an  instance  of  doubt  about  God’s  good¬ 
ness  arising  out  of  the  assumption  of  His  omnipo¬ 
tence,  or,  at  any  rate,  the  assumption  that  Tie 
orders  everything  that  happens. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  pressure  of  the  problem 
has  driven  others,  and  notably  Mr.  Wells  (ever- 
alive  to  the  latest  issue),  to  abandon  the  assumption 
of  God’s  power  and  to  save  some  belief  in  His 
goodness  by  saying  that  He  is  only  relatively  pow¬ 
erful,  but  as  such  is  doing  His  best.  And  there  is 
quite  a  school  of  theologians  who1  say  the  same  sort 
of  thing.  A  staff-officer  of  intelligence  made  an 
interesting  comment  on  such  a  view.  “  I  tell  you 
what !  but  all  this  makes  the  Almighty  into  a  miser¬ 
able  and  pitiable  being.” 

We  have  put  the  problem.  What  can  be  said 
about  it? 

But  before  saying  anything  from  the  Christian 
point  of  view,  it  is  right  to  acknowledge  frankly 
that  in  the  history  of  Christianity  there  have  sel¬ 
dom  been  wanting  some  who1  have  made,  as  it  were, 
an  emergency  exit  from  the  heat  of  tips  burning 
question  by  having  recourse  to  another  world. 
This  was  essentially  the  Deistic  position,  which  had 
so  great  a  sway  in  England  in  the  eighteenth  cen¬ 
tury.  It  solved  the  problems  arising  from  the 
strange  course  of  events  here  by  saying  that  God, 
having  started  events  on  their  course,  had  nothing 


118  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


more  to  do1  with  them,  save  to  watch  them  from 
the  vantage-ground  of  another  world. 

A  striking  and  modern  instance  of  despair  of 
this  world  (which  involves  a  despair  of  there  being 
any  answer  here  to  our  question)  is  the  Roman 
Catholic  modernist,  Father  Tyrrell.  “  The  more 
widely  and  deeply  a  man  lives,  the  more  certainly 
he  becomes  a  pessimist  ”  :  such  is  his  verdict.  It  is 
followed  by  a  grim  picture  of  life  as  governed  by 
the  iron  law  of  inevitable  failure,  so  far  as  the  at¬ 
tainment  of  ideals  is  concerned.  Only  in  the  life  to 
come  will  human  aspiration  be  met  with  realisation. 
Here,  then,  is  nothing  for  the  Christian  to  do  but 
to  set  his  teeth  and  hold  on  and  wait.  And  over 
and  above  these  special  instances  is  the  very  definite 
stream  of  Christian  sentiment — it  finds  especially 
marked  outlet  in  hymns — which  views  this  world 
and  its  troubles  as  of  nothing  worth,  and  yearns 
only  for  the  world  beyond,  where  all  will  be  set 
right.  There  has  indeed  been  much  to  promote  the 
reaction  of  social  democracy  against  a  gospel  of 
“  Kingdom  Come,”  which,  it  protests,  has  left  out 
of  account  the  necessity  of  building  the  “  King¬ 
dom  Here.” 

It  also  should  be  said  that  the  Christian  answer 
to  our  burning  question  cannot  be  as  simple  or  as 
glib  as  it  has  sometimes  appeared  to  be.  The 
answer  used  to  run,  that  all  was  originally  well  with 
the  completed  world  as  it  left  the  Creator’s  hands, 
but  then  came  the  Fall  of  Satan,  and  then  the  envy 
of  Satan  tempting  man  to  fall,  and  thence  sprang 
all  the  trouble. 


OMNIPOTENCE 


119 


It  is  no  disloyalty  to  the  tremendous  reality  of 
moral  evil  or  to  the  tragedy  of  perverted  spiritual 
powers  to  declare  that  this  as  a  complete  answer  is 
too  thin.  It  does  not  cover  all  the  facts.  It  is  im¬ 
possible  fairly  to  write  down  to  the  account  of 
fallen  angels  or  fallen  men  all  the  strain,  the  strug¬ 
gle,  the  cost  inherent  in  the  prolonged  story  of  the 
cosmic  process.  It  will  never  be  possible  again  to 
take  that  static  view  of  the  world  as  a  completed 
thing  which  the  old  explanation  implies.  For  there 
is  a  problem  of  pain  distinguishable  from  the  prob¬ 
lem  of  sin,  though  without  doubt  the  former  has 
been  enormously  complicated  and  intensified  by  the 
latter.  It  is  in  truth  profitless  to  try  to  escape  from 
this  main  problem  of  experience  by  appeal  to  what 
was  supposed  to  have  happened  at  the  beginning  of 
things.  No  hope  lies  that  way  of  meeting  that 
which  is  heartfelt  and  sincere,  in  the  passionate 
dismay  of  innumerable  hearts  to-day  at  the  long- 
drawn  tale  of  the  world’s  suffering  and  tragedy. 

In  other  words,  it  is  right  to'  acknowledge  that 
the  need  of  men  is  not  only  for  reconciliation  with 
God.  Despite  the  danger  of  saying  that  which 
lends  itself  to  challenge,  it  must  also  be  said  that 
there  is  the  need  of  God’s  reconciliation  with  men. 
There  is,  in  a  word,  a  problem  of  the  goodness  of 
God,  arising  out  of  the  facts  of  life,  as  well  as  the 
problem  of  the  sin  of  men. 

In  saying  this  it  is  justifiable  to  refer  again  to 
the  way  in  which,  without  reference  to  Genesis  or 
Satan,  the  minds  and  souls  of  Jewish  men  felt  and 
saw  the  problem  of  the  world’s  confusion  and  pain. 


120  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


They  were  not  afraid  to  cry  out  to  God  in  protest, 
and  to  ask  that  He  should  justify  His  ways  to 
them.  And  this  they  did,  while  at  the  same  time 
they  were  acutely  and  uniquely  sensitive  to  the  ter¬ 
rific  facts  of  human  guilt  and  to  the  bitterness  of 
which  men’s  hearts  are  aware.  In  fact  it  is  true  to 
say  that  the  Old  Testament,  properly  understood, 
furnishes  no  plain  solution  of  the  problem  of  the 
tragic  in  life.  Rather  it  puts  the  problem  with  a 
greater  intensity  than  anywhere  else  in  literature. 
It  put  the  problem  with  unconquerable  faith  that 
an  answer  to  it  would  be  forthcoming.  But  it  had 
itself  no1  answer  in  its  grasp. 

And  when  we  come  to  Christ,  it  is  fair  to  say 
that  no  explanation  of  the  problem  of  evil  and  of 
pain  can  be  attributed  to  Him.  Rather  He  con¬ 
fronted  the  problem  with  no  endeavour  to  explain 
it  away.  He  saw  the  world  as  a  battlefield  between 
good  and  evil.  He  never  said  why  it  was  so. 
There  was  no  solution  of  that  question  for  Him 
other  than  that  of  plunging  into  the  fray.  We 
shall  try  to  see  what  the  Christian  answer  is  to 
these  deep  questions.  But  we  can  say  beforehand 
that  it  is  not  an  answer  which  explains  and  clears 
up  everything.  There  are  certain  fundamental 
questions  which  admit  of  no  complete  intellectual 
answer.  There  is  no  way  round  them  but  only 
through  them .  And  that  was  Christ’s  way.  To 
take  the  world  as  it  was,  to  face  its  worst,  to  set 
His  face  steadfastly  therein  to  do  the  Father’s  will. 


XVIII 


OMNIPOTENCE— II 


WE  have  now  to  try  to  see  what  Christianity 
has  to  say  to  the  great  problem  of  God’s 
power.  Every  time  anyone  calls  Him 
Almighty  he  is  likely  to  set  the  question  moving: 
“If  Almighty,  then  why  not  more  effective?  Why 
does  He  not  come  to  the  rescue  of  the  world  and 
use  His  power  so  as  to  set  things  right?  ” 

What  has  Jesus  Christ  to'  say  about  this  old  but 
perennial  question?  Several  things. 

First,  we  find  in  Him  no  demand  that  life  here 
should  be  smooth,  easy,  painless.  It  was  a  diffi¬ 
culty,  indeed  an  intense  temptation,  to  Him  that 
people  wanted  to  exploit  His  power  merely  for  the 
sake  of  bodily  health.  His  attitude  in  this  regard 
differs  deeply  from  the  desires  of  the  luxurious,  the 
comfort-loving,  the  cowardly,  the  pursuers  of  phys¬ 
ical  well-being  at  any  price.  He  holds  out  no  en¬ 
couragement  to  those  who  want  to  make  of  life  one 
long  round  of  untroubled  pleasure.  His  sanction 
cannot  rightly  be  claimed  by  those  who  would  deny 
the  reality  of  pain  and  suffering.  Rather  He  is  a 
comrade  in  the  great  company  of  men  and  women 
who  have  seen  that  the  life  of  adventure,  risks  and 
pains  is  the  real  life,  by  contrast  with  which  the 
worship  of  ease  and  security  is  tasteless,  colourless 
and  morbid.  He  certainly,  therefore,  says  to  those 


121 


122  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


oppressed  with  the  problem  of  pain,  that  that  which 
they  call  a  problem  is  of  the  very  essence  and  salt 
of  life.  And  in  so  saying,  He  has  all  the  lovers, 
adventurers,  pioneers,  mariners,  soldiers,  mountain- 
climbers,  steeplechase-riders,  on  His  side. 

Further,  He  urges  us  to  drink  the  cup  of  life 
without  lamentation,  because  Fie  viewed  this  pres¬ 
ent  world  as  not  being  self-contained,  but  as  set 
against  the  background  of  eternity.  In  other 
words,  Fie  interpreted  life  on  earth  as  being  the 
testing-place  and  the  school  of  character,  the  full 
significance  of  which  would  be  disclosed  in  the  life 
to  come.  Hymns  and  so  forth  may  no  doubt  have 
caricatured  and  exaggerated  this  attitude,  of  which 
the  centre  and  focus  is  other-worldly.  But,  when 
that  has  been  allowed  for,  we  see  that  something 
remains  which  is  intimately  linked  with  His  call  to 
blithe  and  reckless  adventure.  For  to  His  vision 
there  lay  beyond  the  horizons  of  this  world  a  life 
of  greater  scope  and  of  larger  tasks.  Therefore 
He  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  those  who 
hugged  the  comforts  and  satisfactions  of  this 
world,  as  though  beyond  death  was  nought  but 
shadows  and  silence.  His  zest  in  work  and  effort 
sprang  integrally  from  His  interpretation  of  life  as 
a  pilgrimage.  “  Find,”  He  cried,  “  the  secret  of 
life  now,  not  by  trying  to  save  your  life,  but  by 
giving  it  away — find  it  now  and  to  all  eternity.” 
We  do  not  then  find  Jesus  Christ  quarrelling  with 
the  steepness  of  life’s  hill,  nor  with  the  risks  in¬ 
volved  in  climbing  it. 

Yet,  secondly,  He  was  far  from  callousness  in 


OMNIPOTENCE 


123 


face  of  a  suffering  world.  Rather,  as  is  evident 
throughout  the  Gospel  story,  He  was  ever  being 
touched  to  compassion  for  it.  Pie  wanted  to  bring 
deliverance,  both  of  soul  and  body,  to  men.  i\nd 
this  because,  as  He  explicitly  said,  that  was  the 
Father’s  burning  desire.  He  had  been  anointed, 
He  said,  specifically  to  declare  that.  And,  what  is 
more,  Pie  confronted  life  in  the  faith  that  there 
were  in  the  Father’s  hands  boundless  possibilities 
of  health  and  restoration  and  freedom.  (Would 
that  the  Church  had  faithfully  remembered  this!) 
Undoubtedly  He  believed  in  a  God,  not  of  weak¬ 
ness,  but  of  power.  “  With  God  all  things  are  pos¬ 
sible  .  .  .  have  faith  in  God  ” — the  words  were 
called  out  by  the  doubtfulness  of  others.  They 
point  to  that  which  others  coveted  in  Him.  “  In¬ 
crease  our  faith,”  they  said. 

Yet,  thirdly,  His  consciousness  of  power,  being 
available  for  curing  the  ills  of  life,  was  mingled 
with  the  clear-eyed  recognition  that  the  power  lay 
in  the  hands  of  a  Father  of  children,  and  not  of  a 
king  of  subjects.  Hence  His  refusal  to  establish 
the  Kingdom  of  the  Father  by  means  merely  of 
exhibitions  of  power.  The  power  was  there,  but 
Pie  could  not  use  it  without  violating  the  true 
nature  of  men,  namely,  their  birthright  of  freedom 
as  children,  not  slaves,  of  God.  Here  we  come 
right  down  upon  the  subject  of  Christ’s  temptation. 
His  decisive  battle  with  temptation  was  preceded 
by  His  baptism,  which  brought  with  it  the  con¬ 
sciousness  of  His  own  Sonship.  He  went  out  into 
the  wilderness  to  decide  how  He  should  win  other 


124  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


sons  of  God  and  bring  them  under  the  sway  of 
God’s  reign.  His  temptation  was  to  employ  meth¬ 
ods,  seductive,  marvellous,  compelling,  to  this  end. 
He  felt  that  there  lay  to  His  hand  the  three  great 
ways  of  “  getting  at  ”  men — Bread,  Mystery,  and 
Force.  But  He  put  them  away  then  and  thereafter. 
He  chose  to  respect  the  freedom  of  men.  He 
aligned  Himself  with  the  Father’s  choice  to  have 
free  children  in  His  world  and  nothing  less.  He 
refused  therefore  to  exploit  the  power  available  in 
the  Father’s  hands  by  using  it  in  ways  which  would 
override  men’s  freedom  of  choice.  He  went  out  on 
the  supreme  adventure  of  winning — not  forcing — 
their  free  response.  He  had,  then,  implicit  and 
unwavering  faith  in  the  power  of  God,  but  it  was 
the  power  of  Him  whose  name  was  Father.  In 
other  words,  He  clearly  recognised  a  restraint  on 
the  Power  of  God. 

Of  course,  it  may  be  replied  by  someone  that  it 
would  have  been  far  better  if  God  had  not  given 
men  freedom.  Certainly  it  would  be  a  tidier  world 
if  they  were  automata.  It  would  be  a  less  painful 
business  if  they  were  solely  ruled  by  animal  in¬ 
stinct.  The  risk  and  cost  of  their  being  in  the 
world  with  (in  some  measure)  self-directed  powers 
of  creation  and  destruction,  are  undeniable.  It  is 
always  possible  to  throw  in  God’s  face  His  fatal 
gift  of  freedom.  All  that  can  certainly  be  said. 
And  there  is  no  answer  to  it.  The  man  who  would 
prefer  to  be  a  machine,  a  vegetable,  or  an  animal  to 
being  a  man,  must  be  left  with  his  preference.  He 
has  sold  his  birthright. 


OMNIPOTENCE 


125 


But  to  return  to  Christ.  We  see  Him  as  con¬ 
fidently  in  touch  with  boundless  power,  but  power 
restrained  by  the  fact  of  what  God  is  and  what 
men  are. 

Yet,  fourthly,  He  did  not  look  upon  the  Father, 
whose  power  was  thus  restrained,  as  inactively  con¬ 
templating  the  mess  that  His  children  are  making 
of  their  freedom.  There  is  no  sign  in  the  Gospels 
that  Jesus  thought  of  the  Father  as,  so  to  say,  sit¬ 
ting  in  impotence,  faced  by  a  world  gone  wrong. 
Rather  it  was  the  very  essence  of  His  message  to 
men — as  it  were  the  very  point  of  the  spear  zmth 
which  He  attacked  their  hearts  and  minds — that 
the  Father  was  in  ceaseless  activity  to  transform 
and  emancipate  the  world.  Hence  the  revolution¬ 
ary  intolerance  of  Jesus.  Hence  the  fire  which  He 
came  to  cast  upon  the  earth.  Hence  His  denunci¬ 
ation  of  acquiescence  in  evils  which  were  not  the 
will  of  the  Father,  but  which  free  and  whole- 
hearted  surrender  to  the  Father  would  abolish. 

Such,  then,  is  the  light  which  Christ  throws  upon 
our  problem.  That  is  what  He  says  to<  it.  But  He 
did  not  only  say  things.  He  acted  them  out.  He 
went  through  with  His  divine  adventure.  In  ago¬ 
nised  but  in  invincibly  loyal  conformity  to  the 
Father’s  will,  He  allowed  the  worst  that  men.  in 
their  exercise  of  tlieir  freedom,  could  do  to  Him. 
He  yielded  Himself  to  the  death  which  seemed  to 
proclaim  the  triumph  of  the  powers  of  evil  and  the 
impotence  of  the  Father.  And  thus  He  set  free 
the  pent-up  power  of  the  Father.  Thus  was  veri¬ 
fied  the  reality  of  the  Father’s  love.  The  Father, 


126  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


being  the  Father,  had  not  intervened  to  prevent  His 
children  doing  what  they  would.  But  when  they 
had  done  their  worst  His  love  was  not  impotent. 
But  it  poured  out,  in  response,  to  transform  the 
very  symbol  of  its  failure  into  the  manifestation 
of  its  victory. 

Thus  comes  through  the  Christian  answer  to  the 
problem  of  omnipotence.  It  is  the  message  of  the 
Cross,  laying  bare  the  inmost  nature  of  things,  de¬ 
claring  that  God  is  no  remote  and  powerless  spec¬ 
tator  of  events,  but  is  utterly  identified  with  the 
suffering  of  the  world.  It  is  also  the  message  of 
the  Resurrection,  declaring  that  God,  who  because 
He  is  love  cannot  prevent  the  sin  of  His  children, 
is  not  defeated  by  sin,  but  in  the  omnipotence  of 
love  can  overrule  it  and  destroy  it. 

It  is,  let  us  repeat,  the  omnipotence  of  love,  not 
the  omnipotence  which  means  the  being  able  to  do 
anything  whatever.  It  is  the  being  able  to  do 
whatever  love  can  do. 

The  fact  is,  men  have  in  part  created  the  problem 
at  which  they  have  boggled.  They  have  done  this 
by,  as  it  were,  dividing  the  Deity  into  two  halves — 
into  Power  and  into  Love.  And  then  they  have 
been  set  wondering  how  to  reconcile  the  two  halves. 
The  Christian  revelation  allows  of  no  such  division. 
It  declares  that  the  essence  of  God’s  power  is  His 
love,  for  that  is  what  He  is.  What  is  even  more 
it  declares  that  the  fountains  of  omnipotent  love 
are  open  for  present  appropriation.  It  summons 
a  disbelieving,  neglectful,  defiant  world  to  take  the 
God  and  Father  of  Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  at  His 


OMNIPOTENCE 


127 


word  and  to  put  to  the  proof  that  which  was  re¬ 
jected  when  Jesus  was  on  earth- — that  which  never¬ 
theless  was  opened  up  by  Him  for  all  who  will 
follow  Him. 

Argue  as  we  may,  in  the  end  the  Christian  an¬ 
swer  is  no  clear  explanation  of  life’s  problem. 
Rather  it  retains  the  character  of  an  hypothesis, 
the  truth  of  which  must  be  clinched  by  verification. 
It  challenges  a  world  in  captivity  tO'  find  out 
whether  there  is  not  in  God  power  to  change  it  and 
set  it  free.  God  will  never  intervene  so  as  to 
change  the  world  against  its  will.  He  will  never 
“  stop  the  war.”  He  will  not  make  men  different 
by  force.  To  do  so  would  be  to  contradict  His 
own  nature  and  theirs.  But  He  has  given  them 
the  capacity  of  love — self-surrender,  self-giving, 
co-operation — and  that  is  the  means  of  releasing 
His  omnipotence. 

The  world  has  for  long  tried  every  other  hypoth¬ 
esis  as  a  way  of  life.  Modern  society  is  a  system 
which  has  been  built  in  disregard  to  God  and  in 
defiance  of  His  laws.  It  threatens  to  tumble.  Yet 
that  is  not  God’s  will.  He  is  waiting  to  give  His 
children — if  by  love  they  will  take  it — a  better 
world. 


XIX 


THE  ATONEMENT— I 

HE  next  great  subject  of  which  we  should 
attempt  to  treat  is  the  Atonement.  The 


Gospel  has  ever  been  more  than  either  an 
illumination  about  God  or  the  example  of  a  perfect 
human  life.  It  has  been  an  act  of  redemption,  of 
reconciliation,  a  bringing  together — a  making  at 
one — of  God,  in  all  His  holiness,  with  men  in  all 
their  sinfulness.  It  not  only  throws  light  on  what 
is  tragic  and  corrupt  in  human  life,  but  deals 
actively  and  victoriously  with  it. 

As  regards  no  part  of  Christianity  is  there  more 
need  for  an  attempt  to  consider  it  afresh  and  not 
merely  through  the  lenses  of  previous  theological 
thought,  than  in  dealing  with  the  Atonement.  No 
subject  has  attracted  to  itself  more  thought  than 
the  atoning  death  of  Christ.  It  comes  down  to  us 
like  a  much-voyaged  ship,  thickly  encrusted  with 
barnacles  and  marine  deposits.  The  metaphor  is 
too  drastic,  as  it  implies  that  the  thought  of  pre¬ 
vious  generations  is  valueless  and  deserves  only  to 
be  scraped  off.  That  is  not  true,  and  it  would  be 
presumptuous  to  say  that  it  was  true.  But  we  will 
let  the  metaphor  stand,  as  signifying  the  desirabil¬ 
ity  of  looking  anew  at  a  subject  around  which  so 
much  speculation  has  clustered. 

Undoubtedly  various  doctrines  of  Atonement 


128 


THE  ATONEMENT 


129 


have  left  wrong  impressions  on  the  general  mind 
and  have  surrounded  the  Cross  with  repellent 
associations.  Notions  of  an  angry  God  to  be  ap¬ 
peased  by  blood :  a  God  who  could  by  the  punish¬ 
ment  of  the  innocent  be  disposed  to  treat  more 
lightly  the  sins  of  the  guilty :  notions  of  a  ransom 
paid  by  Christ  to  the  devil :  notions  of  the  relation¬ 
ship  between  God  and  men  being  that  of  creditor 
and  debtor — such  interpretations  have  had  a  wide 
currency  at  some  time  or  other.  They  have  served 
to  put  many  men  in  a  pathological  frame  of  mind 
as  soon  as  the  subject  of  the  Atonement  is  men¬ 
tioned.  It  is  also  only  fair  to  make  the  same  ad¬ 
mission  about  the  unrestrained  use  which  has  so 
often  been  made  of  the  imagery  of  blood-shedding. 
Doubtless  this  imagery  of  the  Precious  Blood  of 
Christ  is  as  a  casket  containing  a  treasure.  But 
unless  the  casket  be  opened,  the  imagery  inter¬ 
preted,  the  treasure  will  lie  hidden  from  many  by 
that  which  is  repulsive  to  them. 

Another  way  of  putting  the  need  of  fresh  recon¬ 
sideration  of  the  subject  is  to  point  out  that,  in 
dealing  with  Atonement,  men  have  often  laid  al¬ 
most  exclusive  emphasis  on  the  reconciliation  of 
men  with  God,  and  have  left  all  but  untouched  the 
reconciliation  of  God  with  men.  Of  course,  the 
reconciliation  in  either  case  is  not  the  same.  To  say 
that  God  needs  man’s  forgiveness,  as  man  needs 
His,  is  to  blaspheme.  But  if  the  need  of  reconcilia¬ 
tion  springs  from  the  fact  that  there  are  barriers 
between  God  and  man,  then  it  is  impossible  to  say 
that  all  the  barriers  are  made  up  of  human  sin. 


ISO  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


For,  as  we  have  seen  repeatedly,  there  is  a 
“  darkness  round  about  ”  God,  and  it  is  a  darkness 
which  has  been  felt  more  intensely  by  the  saint 
than  the  sinner.  True,  God  has  not  left  Himself 
without  witness  all  down  the  ages.  But  that  wit¬ 
ness — all  in  life  that  testifies  to  what  He  is — itself 
gives  rise  to  questions  the  burden  and  the  pressure 
of  which  are  felt  to  separate  Him  from  us.  Thus  it 
came  about  that  the  religiously  expert  people  who 
were  most  sure  about  Him  were  also  in  most  pain¬ 
ful  doubt  about  Him.  They  felt,  as  they  strove  to 
lay  hold  on  Him,  that  they  were  met  by  barriers 
which  they  could  not  pass. 

In  the  world,  therefore,  into  which  Christ  came 
there  was,  as  it  were,  a  double  barrier.  The  posi¬ 
tion  may  be  likened  (though  a  metaphor  drawn 
from  the  hostilities  of  war  must  not  be  pressed  to 
its  logical  conclusion)  to  that  during  the  war  on 
one  of  the  great  high  roads  in  France,  across  which 
there  were  drawn  the  two  tremendous  systems  of 
front-line  trenches.  The  road,  made  for  coming 
and  going,  was  doubly  barred ;  and  in  between  the 
tangled  lines  of  barbed  wire  a  section  of  the  road 
was  No  Man’s  Land.  So  the  highway  between 
God  and  man  was  barred,  by  the  barrier  of  the  in¬ 
scrutableness  of  God  and  the  barrier  of  human 
guilt.  Man  could  neither  advance  across  the  en¬ 
tanglements  which  he  had  himself  erected,  nor  ever 
and  again  did  it  seem  that  there  was  movement 
outward  from  the  lines  of  heaven. 

The  first  significance,  therefore,  of  the  action  of 
God  in  Christ  is  the  overthrowing  from  God’s  side 


THE  ATONEMENT 


131 


of  the  barriers  between  Him  and  His  children.  It 
is  the  “  coming  forth  ”  of  the  Son  from  the  Father 
to  find  and  reach  those  who  could  not  reach  Him. 
The  first  meaning  of  the  Cross,  set  up  in  the  dark¬ 
ness  and  squalor  of  a  veritable  No  Man’s  Land,  is 
God  commending  His  love  towards  men,  despite  all 
they  could  do  in  defiance  of  Him.  The  Cross 
means  movement  from  God  towards  man.  It  is 
the  acting  out  of  the  love,  as  of  a  good  shepherd, 
which  seeks  at  any  cost  until  it  finds  those  who 
had  lost  their  way. 

This  primary  good  news  of  God  has  tended  in 
the  course  of  the  centuries  to  fall  into  the  back¬ 
ground  and  to  be  overlooked.  It  is  remarkable, 
for  instance,  how  little  the  teaching  of  the  Church 
about  the  Incarnation  has  resulted  in  their  being 
in  the  average  man’s  mind  a  Christian  idea  of  God. 
This  became  flagrantly  obvious  to  chaplains  during 
the  war.  God,  to  most  men,  was  the  Supreme 
Being,  aloft  above  the  troubles  of  the  world  and 
yet  somehow  responsible  for  them. 

The  Cross,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  far-away 
episode  in  the  life  of  some  mysteriously  good  Man. 
It  spoke  to  few  of  the  Passion  of  God,  of  His 
all-giving  identification  with  the  fortunes  of  His 
wayward  children.  Hence  that  widespread  absence 
to-day  of  a  vivid  sense  of  sin,  which  the  clergy  so 
sorely  lament.  That  varies  directly  with  the  sense 
of  the  reality,  the  presence,  the  love  of  God.  If  He 
is  but  a  heavenly  Stranger  and  His  love  but  a  senti¬ 
mental  fancy,  men  are  left  with  only  a  certain 
natural  uneasiness  about  their  wrongdoings,  which 


132  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


is  far  removed  from  a  genuine  sorrow  for  sin. 
Such  sorrow,  as  distinct  from  selfish  remorse, 
springs  only  from  an  awareness  of  what  sin  does  to 
someone  else.  By  himself  and  for  himself  a  man 
will  care  scarcely  at  all  about  doing  wrong.  But  he 
will  be  stung  into  sorrow  if  it  comes  home  to  him 
that  he  has  broken,  say,  his  mother's  heart  and 
betrayed  her  loving  trust.  So  with  our  relation¬ 
ship  to  God.  Only  the  sense  of  what  that  sin  has 
done  to  His  heart  of  love  will  evoke  penitence  and 
desire  for  forgiveness.  If  He  is  not  thought  of  as 
love,  He  will  figure  in  men’s  lives  only  as  a  dread¬ 
ful  future  Judge,  who  will  some  day  “  get  His  own 
back  ”  and  send  them  to  hell. 

This  remoteness  of  God  from  His  children  which 
accounts  for  their  faint  sense  of  sin  also  finds  ex¬ 
pression  in  the  prevailing  association  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  faith  with  gloom  and  depression.  It  ought  to 
be  a  radiant  thing,  overflowing  with  gratitude, 
singing  with  praise,  eager  in  worship.  It  is  com¬ 
monly  thought  of  as  that  which  threatens  and 
overshadows  life  with  kill-joy  influence.  It  has,  in¬ 
deed,  as  a  faith  been  deeply  tinged  by  the  natural 
sadness  of  a  religion.  For  Christianity  is  or  ought 
to  be  a  faith  with,  as  its  radiant  centre,  an  object  of 
trust  and  love  and  adoration.  Whereas  religion,  as 
its  history  overwhelmingly  proves,  may  be  but  the 
expression  of  self.  Its  essential  characteristic, 
which  is  aspiration  God-ward,  is  habitually  sad¬ 
dened  and  confused  by  the  scruples,  anxieties,  fears 
of  man’s  self-centered  consciousness.  Thus  the 
world  was  sick  and  weary  of  religion,  when  the 


THE  ATONEMENT 


133 


Gospel  of  God,  and  of  His  man-ward  love,  came  to 
it,  with  the  fear-dispelling",  joy-evoking  effect  of 
day  breaking  in  upon  night. 

So  when  we  consider  Atonement  and  Reconcilia¬ 
tion  we  must  not  begin  with  offering  for  sin  from 
man’s  side.  Otherwise  we  shall  inevitably  go 
astray  and  get  lost  in  the  mire  of  dark  thoughts 
about  an  angry  Deity,  who  could  only  be  induced 
by  the  suffering  of  innocence  to  give  up  His  wrath 
and  think  of  mercy. 

We  must  begin  with  that  which  comes  from 
God’s  side.  And  what  comes  is  what  He  is — 
unmitigated  love.  That  is  what  Christ  means.  For 
He  is  the  mind  of  God.  What  He  is,  God  is.  His 
pity  in  dying  for  us  is  God’s  own  pity.  The  love 
of  God  for  His  sinful  children  sent  His  Son  to 
bring  them  home  from  their  wanderings  in  far 
countries.  God  did  not  so  hate  the  world,  but  so 
loved  it.  His  love  had  not  got  to  be  won  by  sacri¬ 
fice  and  blood.  It  was  His  love  which,  in  utter 
self-sacrifice  even  unto  death,  overthrew  the  bar¬ 
riers  and  re-opened  the  closed  highway.  All  that 
must  come  first. 


XX 


THE  ATONEMENT— II 

WE  have  seen  that  in  thinking  of  the  Atone¬ 
ment  (or  the  reconciliation  between  God 
and  man)  it  is  imperative  to  begin  with 
that  which  came  from  God’s  side.  It  was  the 
Father  who,  in  love  beyond  men’s  conceiving, 
bridged  the  gulf  which  separated  Himself  from 
His  children.  As  a  shepherd  seeks  his  sheep,  the 
Father  sought,  until  He  found,  His  children  and 
“  home  rejoicing  brought  them.” 

That  is  the  first  meaning  of  the  Cross.  “  God,” 
as  St.  Paul  says,  “  commendeth  His  love  towards 
us,  in  that,  while  we  were  yet  sinners,  .  .  .  (while 
we  were  enemies)  Christ  died  for  us  ”  (Rom.  v:8). 
Once  this  tremendous  truth  comes  home  to  men, 
then  they  begin  to  realise  what  their  sin  and  enmity 
do  to  God,  who  loves  them  so.  And  thence  spring 
sorrow  and  desire  for  forgiveness.  Once  there  is 
any  understanding  of  the  love  which  will  suffer 
everything,  even  to  the  man-inflicted  death  upon 
the  Cross,  rather  than  let  go  of  its  object,  then  men 
long  to  respond  to  it. 

And  this  is  where  the  other  side  of  Christ’s  aton¬ 
ing  work  comes  in.  The  first  side,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  His  coming  out  from  God  in  never-relenting 
search  for  us.  The  other  side  is  His  bringing  us 
right  home  to  God  by  making  to  the  Father  the 


134 


THE  ATONEMENT 


135 


response  for  which  the  Father  ever  longs.  What 
He  longs  for  is  ourselves — the  response  to1  His  love 
of  our  love.  To  go  back  to  the  metaphor,  used  in 
the  last  chapter,  of  the  doubly-barred  highway; 
Christ  comes  out  from  the  lines  of  heaven,  and, 
surmounting  every  barrier  put  in  His  way,  leads  us 
forward  and  brings  us  home  along  the  re-opened 
highway.  Both  movements  are  from  God,  and 
both  are  accomplished  in  our  human  nature,  under 
every  condition  of  trial  and  weakness  borne  and 
overcome  by  invincibly  persistent  love.  St.  Paul 
puts  it  finally :  “  All  things  are  of  God,  who  hath 
reconciled  us  to  Himself  by  Jesus  Christ  and  hath 
given  unto  us  the  ministry  of  reconciliation ;  to  wit, 
that  God  was  in  Christ,  reconciling  the  world  unto 
Himself.” 

To  appreciate  anew  what  we  have  called  the 
other  side — the  Father- ward — side  of  Christ’s 
work,  it  is  necessary  to  recognise  that  the  deepest 
thing  in  man  is  not  sin,  that  is  self-devotion,  but  a 
capacity  to  give  himself  to'  God.  Here  as  every¬ 
where  we  have  to  go  to  Christ  and  His  attitude  to 
men,  rather  than  to  the  traditional  systems  in  which 
men  have  sought  to  interpret  Him.  Such  systems 
have  undoubtedly  spread  the  impression  that  man 
is  by  nature  a  “  child  of  wrath,”  in  utter  corrup¬ 
tion,  in  total  depravity  and  with  “  no  health  ”  in 
him.  It  is  in  fact  hard  wholly  to  rebut  the  accusa¬ 
tion  that  Christianity,  in  its  enthusiastic  emphasis 
on  human  depravity,  has  tended  to  blacken  the 
face  of  man. 

But  the  accusation  does  not  get  home  upon 


136  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


Christ,  if  His  proportion  of  faith  in  men  is  distin¬ 
guished  from  the  disproportion  of  the  faith  of 
others.  True,  nothing  can  be  more  tremendous 
than  His  insight  into'  the  tragic  capacity  of  men  to 
sell  their  birthright,  to  plunge  themselves  wilfully 
in  ruin  and  outer  darkness.  Yet,  when  He  came 
among  men,  His  primary  appeal  was  to  their  posi¬ 
tive  capacity  freely  to  respond  to  His  invitation. 
He  did  not  assume  that  they  could  not  respond ;  He 
assumed  that  they  could.  He  did  not  call  them 
“  children  of  wrath.”  His  appeal  was  to  sinners, 
but  not  to  irretrievable  sinners,  but  rather  to  sin¬ 
ners  capable  of  repentance.  He  saw  that  men  were 
evil,  but  He  laid  delighted  emphasis  on  the  fact 
that,  though  evil,  they  could  give  good  gifts  unto 
their  children  ( Luke  xi :  1 3  ) . 

In  other  words,  He  appealed  to  and  trusted  in 
man’s  true  nature  as  made  in  the  image  of  God — as 
made  for  God  and  for  goodness.  He  assumed  the 
unnaturalness  to  man  of  sin,  no  matter  how  much 
man  had  compromised  himself  with  it.  In  a  word, 
He  put  His  seal  to  the  gloriously  optimistic  inter¬ 
pretation  of  experience  (embodied  in  the  story  of 
the  Fall)  which  declares  that  in  sinning  men  fall, 
violate  their  own  nature,  renounce  their  proper 
birthright. 

This  view  of  human  nature  is  dynamic  with 
optimism,  as  contrasted  with  the  dreary  verdicts  of 
evolutionary  philosophy,  which  assert  that  sin  is 
the  inevitable  expression  by  man  of  the  survival 
in  his  nature  of  the  tiger  and  the  ape  (as  though  by 
far  the  worst  exhibitions  of  sin  did  not  come  from 


THE  ATONEMENT 


137 


the  heart  of  the  most  civilised  and  cultured  refine¬ 
ment).  No,  the  Christianity  which  is  true  to*  the 
thought  of  Christ  has  as  its  background,  not  the 
blackness  of  man’s  inevitable  degradation,  but 
the  light  of  his  great  destiny.  If  he  is  in  the  mud, 
he  is  still  a  god  in  the  mud.  He  is  not  a  creature 
of  the  slime.  He  is  made  for  something  far  differ¬ 
ent,  and  is  therefore  infinitely  worth  extricating. 
If  he  is  in  a  far  country,  eating  pigs’  husks,  he  is 
not  at  home  in  his  native  land. 

The  call  of  Christ  to  men  therefore  was  that 
they  should  rise  to  the  height  of  their  destiny.  He 
saw  them  to  be  the  sole  creatures  who  could  satisfy 
and  bring  joy  to  the  loving  heart  of  the  Father,  by 
consciously  and  freely  giving  themselves  to  Him. 
He  did  not  ask  of  them  the  subjection  of  subjects 
to  a  king,  nor  the  deference  of  wrongdoers  to  a 
judge.  He  asked  for  the  response  of  those  beloved 
to  their  Lover.  Thus  He  headed  a  movement  of 
man  up  to  God.  He  greeted  as  “  brother  and  sis¬ 
ter  and  mother  ”  (Mark  iii:35)  those  who'  re¬ 
sponded  to  share  with  Him  the  adventure  of 
co-operation  with  the  Father’s  will. 

But  in  the  end  He  was  bereft  of  His  companions. 
The  capacity  for  self-giving,  to  which  He  appealed, 
proved  insufficient.  The  entirety  of  free  devotion 
of  sons  to  the  Father  proved  to  be  not  forthcoming. 
Sin,  that  is  self,  arrested  His  followers.  Therefore 
He  had  to  carry  through  the  common  enterprise, 
alone  and  comradeless.  He  did  not  do  so  auto¬ 
matically  in  virtue  of  His  deity.  He  did  it  as  Man, 
beset  by  temptation,  winning  His  way  forward  by 


138  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


yielding  Himself  to  the  constraint  of  the  Father’s 
love.  Whatever  might  easily  deter  others  from 
co-operation  with  the  Father,  He  allowed  nothing 
to  deter  Him.  So  He  struggled  forward  and 
reached  alone  the  position  whither  He  had  set  out 
with  others.  He  alone  was  present — cried  “  Ad- 
sum!” — at  the  supreme  hour  of  the  Father’s  pur¬ 
pose.  Surmounting  every  barrier  before  which 
others  fell,  He  flung  Himself,  in  the  garden  of 
agony,  into  union  with  the  active  will  of  the  unseen 
Other.  And  so  He  went  to  the  Cross,  offering 
there,  under  conditions  imposed  by  human  sin  and 
weakness,  the  perfectly  whole-hearted  offering  of 
a  son  to  the  Father. 

On  any  showing  He  did  something  for  others 
which  they  ought  themselves  to  have  done  and 
could  not  do.  He  alone,  as  it  were,  of  all  the  regi¬ 
ment  which  went  “  over  the  top,”  reached  the  ob¬ 
jective.  In  so  doing  He  carried  the  honour  of  the 
whole  regiment  with  Him.  From  man’s  side  and 
as  man  He  carried  humanity  right  home  to  the 
passionately-desirous  heart  of  God.  He  brought 
to  final  achievement  the  whole  age-long  quest  of 
the  race.  It  entailed  suffering,  which,  though  He 
was  innocent,  He  bore.  Not  that  it  was  inflicted 
on  Him  by  the  Father,  but  that  it  was  inflicted  on 
Him  by  others  in  their  blindness  to  and  disregard 
of  the  Father.  Thus  He  saw  that  what  brought 
Himself  to  the  Cross  was  the  repudiation  of  the 
Father  by  His  children.  The  essence  of  the  trag¬ 
edy  was  not  what  they  did  to  Himself,  but  what 
they  did  to  the  Father. 


THE  ATONEMENT 


139 


So  there  broke  out  in  the  silence  and  darkness 
of  Calvary  the  all-revealing  cry — the  pleading  by 
the  seer  for  the  blind,  by  the  innocent  for  the  guilty 
— “  Father,  forgive  them,  for  they  know  not  what 
they  do.”  Is  there  anyone  who  will  maintain  that 
He  does  not  need  the  shelter — the  propitiation — of 
that  prayer  ?  Is  there  anyone  who  looks  back  upon 
the  Cross  as  being  what  it  is,  namely,  the  laying 
bare  of  the  all-suffering  love  of  the  Father — is 
there  anyone  who  will  not  want  to>  be  sorry?  If  a 
man,  unknowing,  had  hit  his  mother  in  the  face  he 
would  be  sorry.  That  is  the  sort  of  thing  that 
averagely  respectable  people  did  to  the  Father  when 
they  rejected  Jesus,  coming  in  the  Father’s  name, 
and  brought  Him  to  the  Cross.  But  once  anyone 
is  touched  to  sorrow  for  sin,  he  finds,  if  he  is 
honest,  that  he  is  only  half-sorry.  For  he  finds 
himself  torn  in  two  in  an  internal  discord.  He 
knows  that  he  is  made  for  love — for  self-giving — 
but,  in  fact,  he  prefers  to  love  and  to  save  himself. 
That  is  precisely  what  Peter  found. 

Thus  we  get  a  glimpse  of  the  saving  mystery  of 
Christ’s  atoning  work  for  us.  We  can  press  in 
along  the  way  of  union  of  man  with  God,  which 
He  has  opened.  Though  we  are  not  sorry,  or 
only  half-sorry,  we  can  identify  ourselves  with 
His  plea  for  forgiveness.  We  can  identify  our¬ 
selves — in  all  our  imperfection — with  the  perfect 
offering  of  Himself  which  He  made  to  the 
Father.  We  can  cry  to  the  Father,  whose  love 
we  doubt  and  outrage :  “  Only  look  on  us  as  found 
in  Him.”  We  can  share  delightedly  in  the  Offer- 


140  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


ing  which  is  the  central  mystery  of  Christian 
worship. 

But  that  implies  a  union  of  men  with  Christ  of 
which  we  must  treat  in  another  chapter.  The 
Atonement — the  at-onement  of  God  with  man,  and 
man  with  God — is  only  complete  when  Christ  lives 
in  men  and  they  live  in  Him. 


XXI 

THE  CHURCH:  IS  IT  NECESSARY? 


THE  concluding  words  of  the  last  chapter  in¬ 
dicate  a  point  of  departure  for  considering 
the  Church.  Doubtless  whatever  is  written 
by  a  bishop  on  this  subject  will  be  suspect  by  some 
and  discounted  by  others  as  being  special  pleading. 
It  is  not  a  popular  subject.  There  are  indeed  many 
who  share  V oltaire’s  opinion :  “  Pour  etre  heureux, 
il  faut  vivre  loin  des  gens  de  l’eglise  ”  (To  be  happy 
one  must  live  far  from  the  Church-folk).  Never¬ 
theless  even  a  bishop  can  fairly  ask  others  to  think 
for  themselves  about  a  fact  which  in  this  degree 
and  that  touches  everyone’s  life,  even  though  many 
are  on  their  guard  lest  it  should  touch  them  too 
closelv. 

J 

It  must  also  be  acknowledged  that  the  subject 
is  difficult  to  treat — more  especially  in  the  public 
press — uncontroversially.  Yet  it  would  be  faint¬ 
hearted  to  shirk  the  subject  for  that  reason.  If 
the  Church  has  been  the  subject  of  intense  con¬ 
troversy,  that  is  itself  a  sign  that  it  is  something 
vitally  worth  discussing.  Discussion,  therefore,  of 
the  Church  is  included  in  this  book.  But  it  is  in¬ 
cluded  with  the  intention  and  the  desire  not  to 
score  party  advantage  thereby. 

The  writer  believes  that  the  Church  of  Christ  is 
a  greater  thing  than  any  existing  Church,  and  he 


141 


142  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


disbelieves  that  any  Church  has  a  monopoly  of 
divine  blessing.  The  Church  of  the  future — the 
Great  Church  as  it  has  recently  been  called — will 
never  be  brought  nearer  by  those  who  claim  to  be 
sole  possessors  of  the  Fact  of  Christ.  It  is  pre¬ 
cisely  such  a  claim  which  has  rent  the  One  Family 
or  Society  or  Body  into  fragments.  The  revivifi¬ 
cation  of  those  fragments  into  one  will  only  result 
from  the  recognition  on  all  hands  that  Christ,  as 
Way  and  Truth  and  Life,  is  more  than  any  section 
of  His  followers  has  apprehended. 

So  we  ask  the  question  which  is  the  title  of  this 
chapter :  “  Is  the  Church  necessary?  ” 

The  question  is  not  unnecessary.  It  stirs  in 
many  minds  as  a  symptom  of  their  dismay  at  the 
distance  which  separates  the  Church  as  it  is  from 
the  character  of  Him  whose  name  it  bears.  Un¬ 
questionably  the  Church  often  appears  to  have 
undergone  decapitation.  That  is,  as  a  body  it 
seems  to  have  been  separated  from  its  Head. 
Some  of  the  most  formidable  of  the  Church’s  crit¬ 
ics  are  not  those  who  “  care  for  none  of  these 
things,”  but  those  who  do  not  recognise  in  the 
Church  the  reality  of  that  for  which  Christ  lived 
and  died.  Hence  the  inclination  to  assert  that 
Christ’s  religion  is  something  which  it  is  fatal  to 
organise:  that  it  is  rather  a  purely  spiritual  thing, 
like  the  Spirit,  “  blowing  where  it  listeth,”  and  as 
such  never  to  be  caught  and  caged  within  the  four 
walls  of  an  institution.  Thus  the  creeds,  cere¬ 
monies,  ministries  of  the  Church  are  viewed  as 
though  they  were  features  of  a  museum,  wherein 


THE  CHURCH:  IS  IT  NECESSARY?  143 


all  that  once  was  alive  is  dead,  while  the  living 
thing  is  elsewhere. 

From  the  same  kind  of  source  springs  the  view — 
perhaps  especially  favourite  among  Anglo-Saxons 
— that  the  essential  thing  in  Christianity  is  moral¬ 
ity;  that  it  is  not  a  religion  but  an  ethic,  which  as 
such  is  independent  of  everything  ecclesiastical. 
And  to  these  views  there  must  be  added  the  com¬ 
mon  conviction  that  it  is  illegitimate  to  bind  indi¬ 
viduals  in  all  their  rich  variety  by  any  corporate  tie 
or  any  bond  of  common  allegiance.  Each  must 
fashion  his  own  creed :  each  must  be  his  own  priest. 
In  a  word,  to  alter  a  well-known  aphorism, 
“  L’Eglise  c’est  moi  ”  (I  am  the  Church).  And  so 
forth.  Certainly  our  question,  “  Is  the  Church 
necessary  ?  ”  is  one  which  needs  to  be  asked. 

Any  satisfactory  answer  to  the  question  must  be 
grounded  on  history,  and  in  particular  on  the  his¬ 
tory  in  the  New  Testament. 

Briefly,  it  may  be  said  that  the  Church  is  neces¬ 
sary,  because  without  the  Church  there  would  have 
been  no  such  thing  as  Christianity  in  the  world. 
For,  but  for  His  getting  right  home  within  the 
hearts  of  those  who  had  followed  Him,,  Christ 
Himself  would  have  come  to  and  gone  from  earth 
as  a  stranger  “  who  tarries  but  a  day.”  It  is  quite 
clear  that  the  life  of  Jesus  on  earth  by  itself  pro¬ 
duced  little  or  no  result.  When  He  came  to  die  on 
Calvary,  as  we  have  seen,  He  had  not  succeeded  in 
doing  anything  but,  by  word  and  deed,  by  teaching 
and  by  living,  fan  into  flame  faith  and  expectation 
of  which  the  object  was  the  unseen  Father.  And 


144  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


that  faith  and  expectation  were  smothered,  as  a  fire 
is  smothered  by  a  gale  of  rain,  by  the  disastrous 
ignominy  of  His  sordid  fate. 

It  is  also  only  a  little  less  clear  that  the  Resur¬ 
rection  of  Jesus  by  itself  would  have  yielded  no1 
lasting  result  in  history.  It  was  not  a  sign  to  carry 
conviction  to  the  general  public.  That  was  exactly 
what  Jesus  refused  to  grant  to  the  shallow  and 
sensation-loving  multitude.  He  returned,  tri¬ 
umphant  over  death,  only  to  those  who  had  been 
His  comrades  in  His  temptations.  The  experience 
of  being  “  glad  when  they  saw  the  Lord  ”  was  given 
only  to  the  little  band  of  His  friends.  Doubtless 
they  would  never  have  forgotten  it,  but  it  is  hard 
to  see  how  they  could  ever  have  brought  it  home  to 
others,  even  to  their  fellow- Jews,  let  alone  to 
critically-minded  Greeks.  It  would  have  been 
something  real  to  them,  but  beyond  realisation  by 
others.  Just  as  the  Ypres  salient  is  real  to  “  the 
boys,”  but  is  essentially  beyond  realisation  on  the 
part  of  those  who  were  not  there,  no  matter  what 
those  who  have  survived  its  hellish  fires  may  try  to 
do  to  make  it  real  to  them. 

So  this  is  the  first  word  of  answer  to  our  ques¬ 
tion.  The  Church — the  Fellowship  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  the  Body  of  the  Living  Christ — is  that  with¬ 
out  which  the  memory  of  Jesus  would  have  faded 
out  of  history. 

He  would — it  is  substantially  true  to  say — have 
subsided  into  the  kind  of  position  held  by  Theudas 
and  Judas  as  described  by  that  sagacious  old  man 
Gamaliel.  He  said,  when  he  and  his  fellow- 


THE  CHURCH:  IS  IT  NECESSARY?  145 


councillors  were  confronted  by  the  phenomena  of 
the  men  who  “  had  been  with  Jesus  ”  :  “  Ye  men 
of  Israel,  take  heed  to  yourselves  as  touching  these 
men,  what  ye  are  about  to  do.  For  before  these 
days  rose  up  Theudas,  giving  himself  out  to  be 
somebody;  to  whom  a  number  of  men,  about  four 
hundred,  joined  themselves:  who  was  slain;  and 
all,  as  many  as  obeyed  him,  were  dispersed,  and 
brought  to  nought.  After  this  man  rose  up  Judas 
of  Galilee  in  the  days  of  the  enrolment,  and  drew 
away  some  of  the  people  after  him:  and  all,  as 
many  as  obeyed  him,  were  scattered  abroad.  And 
now  I  say  unto  you,  Refrain  from  these  men,  and 
let  them  alone:  for  if  this  counsel  or  this  work  be 
of  men,  it  will  be  overthrown :  but  if  it  is  of  God, 
ye  will  not  be  able  to  overthrow  it;  lest  haply 
ye  be  found  even  to  be  fighting  against  God  ” 
(Acts  v:35-39). 

That,  then,  we  repeat,  is  the  first  thing  to  be 
said  about  the  Church.  And  by  the  Church  is 
meant  the  society  animated  by  the  Holy  Spirit. 
And  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the  risen  and  ascended 
Christ  in  action.  In  fact,  the  coming  of  the  Spirit 
was  as  essential  to'  there  being  a  Gospel  of  any 
kind  to  pass  on  to  the  world  as  was  the  Resurrec¬ 
tion.  For  after  His  coming  Christ  was  found  to 
be  no  longer  merely  an  inimitable  example,  the 
teacher  of  a — humanly  speaking — impossible  ethic, 
but  the  ever-present  source  of  new  life  and  power. 
Then  and  only  then  did  He  storm  the  last  fortress 
in  human  life,  and  that  is  the  human  heart.  He 
got  in  within  those  most  humanly  frail  followers 


146  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


of  His,  and  remade  them  from  within.  And  not 
only  so,  but  through  their  witness  He  did  the  same 
thing  for  others  who  had  never  seen  Him  in  the 
flesh.  He  made  all  mankind  partakers  in  the  vic¬ 
tory  of  His  death  and  resurrection.  He  made  the 
race  anew. 

So  far  so  good.  But  then  the  question  arises : 
“  Granted  what  you  have  said — but,  all  the  same, 
did  Christ  found  the  Church?  Is  He  responsible 
for  ecclesiastical  and  institutional  religion?  ” 


XXII 

CHRIST  AND  THE  CHURCH 


THE  Church  was  necessary  to  the  existence  of 
Christianity.  But  for  the  coming  of  the 
Spirit  to  dwell  in  the  fellowship  of  those 
who  had  been  with  Jesus,  no  Gospel  of  God  could 
ever  have  been  preached  in  His  Name. 

And  the  coming  of  the  Spirit  was,  as  a  fact  of 
experience,  the  coming  of  Jesus  Christ  in  the  Spirit, 
to  carry  on  through  the  Church  the  work  which  He 
had  accomplished  when  He  was  on  earth. 

Thus  the  Master  became  the  inner  source  of  life 
to  others.  Before,  both  in  His  life  and  death  and 
rising,  He  had  been  external  to  His  followers. 
They  had  as  it  were  been  spectators  of  events 
occurring  outside  themselves.  But  they  found 
through  a  common  and  shared  experience,  that 
they  had  been  admitted  into'  intimate  union  with 
their  Lord — that  He  was  in  them  and  they  were 
in  Him.  His  death  became  to  them  nothing  less 
than  the  final  death-blow  to  the  tyranny  of  sin : 
His  rising  to  life  again  meant  the  springing  up 
within  them  of  new  life.  They  went  out  into  the 
great  secular  life  of  Greece  and  of  Rome  not  to 
talk  about  a  dead  Teacher,  but  to  invite  others  to 
realise  the  immediate  presence  and  transforming 
power  of  the  Saviour  who  had  lived  and  died  and 
risen  again. 


147 


148  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


To  put  it  in  another  way,  they  invited  others  to 
come  not  to  a  John  the  Baptist,  who  could  only  im- 
potently  tell  others  to  repent,  but  to  Him  whose 
baptism  was  with  the  Holy  Spirit  and  with  power 
for  the  remission  of  sins. 

That  from  the  very  first  was  the  Gospel.  It  is 
the  good  news  of  the  saving  action  of  God  in 
Christ.  God  did  not  send  to  men  information  or 
a  message  or  illumination  about  Himself.  He  sent 
a  Saviour,  a  Deliverer.  He  came  Himself  to 
deliver  His  children.  And  that  which  He  wrought 
in  Christ  still  goes  on.  Still  tie  does  more  than 
stand  over  against  men.  Still  He  acts  upon  them 
and  makes  them  at  one  with  Himself  in  the  fel¬ 
lowship  of  His  Spirit.  Still  He  lives  in  them  and 
changes  them  and  makes  new  men  of  them.  Still 
He  reconciles  Himself  to  them  and  them  to  Him. 

That  is  the  only  rational  explanation  of  the  rise 
and  spread  of  Christianity,  just  as  it  is  the  secret  of 
its  survival  and  perennial  power  of  recovery. 

Yet  granted  what  we  have  said — granted  that 
Christ  was  first  preached  as  the  Giver  of  Life  to  a 
fellowship  of  believers — the  question  arises  whether 
and  how  much  He  can  be  held  responsible  for  the 
foundation  and  organisation  of  the  Church. 

Certainly  it  would  be  idle  to  deny  that  He  was  a 
vehement  critic  of  ecclesiastical  sins  and  weak¬ 
nesses.  Never  should  it  be  forgotten  that  it  was 
with  the  official  representatives  of  the  Jewish 
Church  that  He  fell  into  sharpest  discord.  On 
them  there  fell  His  severest  condemnation.  It  was 
they — the  leaders  and  shepherds  of  the  flock — who 


CHRIST  AND  THE  CHURCH 


149 


were  most  responsible  for  bringing  Him  to  death. 
Further,  it  would  only  be  blind  partisanship  to 
deny  that  Church  History  is  a  very  mixed  record, 
containing  exceedingly  black  and  seamy  patches. 
The  Church’s  net  has  gathered  in  fish  both  good 
and  bad :  its  field  has  been  widely  sown  with  tares 
as  well  as  with  wheat.  The  light  of  Christ  has 
been  greatly  dimmed  and  veiled  by  the  inertia  and 
confusion  of  His  Church’s  witness. 

Hence  the  naturalness  of  reaction  from  organ¬ 
ised  or  ecclesiastical  Christianity.  Hence  the  sting 
in  such  a  taunt  as  Lessing’s  famous — “  that  while 
Christianity  has  been  tried  for  eighteen  centuries, 
Christ’s  religion  still  remains  to  be  tried.” 

All  this  is  true.  And  yet  there  is  a  “  case  for 
the  defendant  ”  which  deserves  consideration.  And 
we  will  attempt  to  give  it. 

First,  it  should  be  noticed  that  the  spiritual 
movement,  of  which  Christ  was  the  centre,  could 
never  have  made  a  start  but  for  the  existence  of 
the  Jewish  Church,  the  Israel  of  God.  There  is 
much  that  is  repulsive  in  the  Church  of  the  Old 
Testament,  but  there  is  more  that  is  wonderful. 
And  what  is  wonderful  is  the  persistent  survival, 
toughly  encased — as  indeed  in  the  long  run  all 
faith  has  to  be — in  ecclesiastical  institutions  and 
tradition,  of  faith  in  the  living  God. 

That  faith  was  an  unknown  folly  to  the  great 
world-powers  surrounding  Israel.  But  it  survived, 
it  developed,  it  was  reformed,  purified,  deepened, 
moralised,  it  was  nourished  undyingly  within  the 
four  corners  of  a  national  and  organised  cult. 


150  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


And  when  in  the  fulness  of  the  times  the  purposes 
of  God  came  to  fulfilment,  the  response  that  it  met 
with  was  from  within  the  very  bosom  of  regular, 
disciplined,  ecclesiastical  religion.  Zechariah, 
Elisabeth,  Mary,  Joseph,  Anna,  Simeon,  such  were 
the  pious  Church  folk ;  “  righteous  before  God, 
walking  in  all  the  commandments  and  ordinances 
of  the  Eord  blameless  ”  ;  “  which  departed  not  from 
the  temple,  worshipping  with  fastings  and  suppli¬ 
cations  night  and  day  ” ; — such  were  the  simple 
souls  in  whom  faith,  expectant  of  the  “  consolation 
of  Israel,”  was  found  alive.  It  was  the  inner  world 
of  ecclesiastical  piety  which  was  ready  for  the 
arrival  of  the  ever-so-long  tarrying  day  of  their 
Lord.  This  should  never  be  forgotten  by  those 
who  blandly  inform  the  world  that  they  are  “  their 
own  priests  under  God’s  heaven  on  the  hillside.” 

Secondly,  when  Jesus  emerged  from  the  nurture 
and  environment  of  such  piety,  His  appeal  was 
directed  to  the  Church  of  His  people.  His  own 
habit  and  example  was  that  of  a  loyal  son  of  the 
Church.  True,  He  stood  out  as  an  uncompromis¬ 
ing  critic  of  the  Church  as  He  found  it.  But  it 
was  criticism  and  protest — as  of  the  great  prophets 
before  Him — not  from  without  but  from  within. 
He  was  never  driven  into  rupture  or  separation. 
Rather  He  set  Himself  to  consummate  the  destiny 
of  Israel  and  to  fulfill  its  essential  covenant  and 
law.  He  was  not  concerned  merely  with,  isolated 
and  separated  individuals.  Indubitably  He  sought, 
until  He  found,  the  inmost  hearts  of  individuals. 
He  was  satisfied  with  nothing  less,  and  thus  set 


CHRIST  AND  THE  CHURCH 


151 


His  seal  on  the  inviolable  sanctity  and  value  of 
every  child  of  God.  Yet  individuals  were  as  such 
to  Him  children  of  Israel,  “  daughters  of  Abra¬ 
ham/’  members  of  the  Church,  representatives  of 
a  people.  They  were  not  solitary  but  social  units. 
There  is  indeed  no>  such  thing  in  the  world  as  a 
mere  individual,  just  as  there  can  be  no  such  thing 
as  a  human  society  without  the  individuals  which 
make  it  up.  Each  of  us  is  unique,  but  each,  in  the 
very  core  of  our  individual  being,  is  also  social. 

Thirdly,  when  His  appeal  to  His  Church  and 
nation  (for  they  were  one  thing)  fell  for  the  most 
part  on  deaf  ears,  Jesus  concentrated  all  His  powers 
on  training  the  remnant  which  had  responded  to  it, 
against  the  day  of  His  final  rejection.  That  His 
aim  was  not  the  attachment  to  Himself  of  a  few 
selected  individuals,  but  was  the  fulfilment  of  the 
calling  of  the  whole  Church  and  nation,  is  wit¬ 
nessed  to  by  the  acuteness  of  His  disappointment 
and  the  warmth  of  His  indignation  at  the  apostasy 
which  He  found  prevalent  in  the  Church.  It  was 
as  patriot  and  as  churchman  that  He  wept  over 
Jerusalem,  the  sacred  city,  the  embodiment  and 
representative  of  Israel’s  divine  vocation. 

But  though  He  met  with  and  denounced  His 
Church’s  apostasy,  there  is  no  sign  that  He  de^ 
spaired  of  the  Church,  or  manufactured  a  substi¬ 
tute  for  it.  Rather,  as  soon  as  He  had  taken  the 
measure  of  the  infidelity  and  unreadiness  of  His 
people’s  leaders,  He  set  to  work  to  prepare  others 
to  take  their  place.  Finding  wicked  husbandmen 
in  charge  of  the  Lord’s  vineyard,  He  did  not 


152  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


abandon  the  vineyard  and  leave  it  derelict,  but 
took  measures  to  commit  it  to  the  care  of  other 
husbandmen.  Faced  with  the  defects  of  the  old 
bottles,  He  prepared  new  bottles  for  the  new  wine. 

What  we  get  therefore  from  the  record  of 
Christ’s  ministry  as  regards  His  relationship  to  the 
Church,  is  not  the  creation  of  a  new  Church,  but 
the  completion  and  recommissioning  of  the  old 
Church.  In  a  word,  He  “  came  not  to  destroy,  but 
to  fulfil.”  But  in  being  fulfilled  the  old  Church — 
the  Old  Testament  or  covenant — was  superseded. 
The  old  Israel  gave  place  to  the  new. 

Christ  did  not  found  the  Church.  It  was  there 
when  He  came,  founded  upon  God’s  choice  of  a 
people.  What  He  did  was  to  give  Himself  to  be 
the  ‘  instrument  in  the  Father’s  hands,  for  the  ac¬ 
complishment  of  that  for  which  the  Father  had 
made  choice  of  Israel  as  a  Church  and  people. 
As  Messiah — as  the  Christ  of  God — though 
unacknowledged  and  repudiated,  Jesus  yielded 
Himself  to  the  Father,  that  in  faithfulness  and 
righteousness  the  Father  might  bring  in  the  New 
Age.  Shut  up  within  the  narrow  limits  of  the  life 
of  one  people,  Jesus  gave  Himself  to  death  that 
thence  might  spring  the  fulfilment  of  the  ancient 
promise — in  Abraham’s  seed  “  shall  all  the  families 
of  the  earth  be  blessed.” 

We  will  see  in  the  next  chapter  how  this  inter¬ 
pretation  of  the  place  of  the  Church  in  the  Gospels 
works  out  in  the  rest  of  the  New  Testament. 


'  XXIII 


THE  NEW  ISRAEL 


IN  the  last  chapter  it  was  seen  that  Christ  did 
not  create  a  totally  new  Church.  No  Catholic 
Church,  furnished  complete  with  everything 
necessary  for  its  world-wide  mission,  passed  from 
His  hands  into  the  hands  of  His  disciples. 

Yet  He  did  not  leave  them  with  the  task  of 
making  a  new  Church.  The  Church  was  there  for 
them  as  it  had  been  for  Him.  It  was  the  family 
within  which  as  a  matter  of  course  they  were  chil¬ 
dren.  It  was  as  familiarly  around  them  as  the  air 
they  breathed.  Its  origin  lay  far  back,  in  the  days 
of  the  “  fathers,”  when  God  took  unto  Himself  a 
people  and  made  it  the  trustee  of  a  great  destiny. 

Yet,  again,  though  Christ  did  not  create  a  new 
Church,  He  did  not  leave  the  old  Israel  unaltered 
and  as  He1  found  it.  He  cannot  be  quoted  as  the 
authority  for  saddling  Christianity  with  Judaism, 
whole  and  entire,  or  for  shackling  the  world  with 
the  fetters  of  the  Mosaic  law.  Rather  He  insti- 

4 

tuted  the  “  new  covenant  ”  which,  by  fulfilling, 
wound  up  and  cancelled  the  “  old.”  This  was  sub¬ 
stantially  in  the  possession  of  the  remnant  of  the 
true  Israelites  when  He  was  “  parted  from  them.” 
They  understood  the  great  fact — though  they  had 
never  understood  it  until  it  had  happened — that  the 
Great  Day  of  the  God  of  Israel  had  come  and  with 


153 


154  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


it  His  Messiah.  They  had  therefore,  in  the  first 
days  of  all,  the  good  news  of  fulfilled  Jewish  hope 
to  give  to  their  fellow-Jews.  The  fulfilment  had 
been  none  of  their  devising.  The  Day  of  the  Lord 
had  not  brought  what  they  had  anticipated,  namely, 
the  triumph  of  God  in  power  like  that  of  an  earthly 
king.  But  it  had  brought  humiliation  and  suffer¬ 
ing.  It  had  brought  the  Messiah  to  a  cross.  Never¬ 
theless,  incredible  as  it  had  seemed  at  that  time,  that 
humiliation  and  suffering  had  been  the  means  of 
making  known  the  Father’s  love ;  and  the  mocked 
and  crucified  One  was,  after  and  in  spite  of  all,  His 
Messiah. 

So,  within  the  old  Jewish  Church,  the  followers 
of  Jesus  had  at  once  a  message  to  their  fellow 
“  men  of  Israel,”  as  soon  as  ever  the  Spirit  had 
fallen  on  them.  The  burden  of  their  words  is  the 
work  which  the  God  of  Abraham  and  of  Isaac  and 
of  Jacob,  “  the  God  of  our  fathers,”  had  accom¬ 
plished  in  “  his  servant  Jesus.”  They  have  no  idea 
of  forming  a  new  Church,  for  they  are  witnesses 
to  the  carrying  through  to  all-completing  victory 
of  God’s  purpose  for  the  old  Church.  So  they 
have  the  privilege  of  giving  Israel  a  second  chance. 
Their  brethren  had  done  what  they  had  done  in 
ignorance.  Even  now,  therefore,  though  they  had 
asked  for  a  murderer  and  had  killed  the  Prince  of 
Life,  they  could  still  respond  to  Plis  call,  conveyed 
to  them  by  His  witnesses  from  Him  who  was  risen 
and  at  the  right  hand  of  power. 

Such  is  the  picture  of  the  first  days  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  Church,  as  it  is  faithfully  given  in  the  early 


THE  NEW  ISRAEL 


155 


chapters  of  the  Acts.  It  is  a  great  error  to  read 
back  the  Catholic  Faith  into  this  first  phase;  just 
as  it  is  a  great  error  to  read  back  a  belief  in  the 
Incarnation  into  the  days  of  the  ministry.  Before 
His  death  the  disciples  never  got  beyond  a  belief  in 
the  Messiahship  (or  kingship)  of  Jesus,  and  even 
so  they  were  mistaken  as  to  the  nature  of  true  king- 
ship.  And  after  His  rising  and  during  the  first 
Pentecostal  days  they  had  hold  only  of  a  Jewish — 
a  Messianic — gospel  for  Jews. 

Nothing  apparently  that  Jesus  had  said  to  them 
had  brought  home  to  them  its  catholic  (or  uni¬ 
versal)  scope.  They  were  only  led  by  the  Spirit, 
not  without  reluctance  and  controversy  on  their 
part,  to  realise  that  the  Gentiles  had  a  share  in  the 
Gospel.  There  were  indeed,  when  Christ  was  with 
them  in  the  flesh,  many  things  for  Him  to  say  to 
them  which  at  the  time  they  could  not  bear  (John 
xvi :  12) .  There  was  first  and  foremost  the  reality 
of  God,  not  as  Supreme  Monarch,  but  as  Father. 
There  was,  next,  the  manifestation  of  the  Fath¬ 
er’s  love  in  His  Son.  There  was,  lastly,  the  par¬ 
ticipation  by  all  His  children  of  whatever  nation,  in 
the  Fatherhood  thus  revealed.  The  coming  of 
Christ  in  the  Spirit  to  His  Church  was  indeed  es¬ 
sential  to  there  ever  being  a  Gospel  for  the  world. 

This  being  so,  it  is  idle  to  look  in  the  Gospels 
for  precise  and  complete  legislation  by  the  Master 
about  the  Church.  Far  greater  things  than  Church 
legislation  were  still  at  issue  and  still  unappre¬ 
hended  during  the  ministry.  The  eyes  of  the  Mas¬ 
ter  were  set  upon  the  death  to  be  accomplished  at 


156  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


Jerusalem.  Till  that  was  done  nothing  was  done. 
But  when  it  was  done,  then  the  Spirit  would  lead 
His  misunderstanding  followers  into  all  the  many 
things  which  at  the  time  they  could  not  receive. 
Conceptions,  therefore,  of  Christ  as  ecclesiastical 
legislator  must  be  revised. 

Yet  this  must  also  be  said  (though  the  writer 
asks  pardon  if  it  be  thought  controversial  to  say 
it),  that  Christ  did  deliberately  choose,  train  and 
send  a  band  of  men  to  be  the  nucleus  of  the  New 
Israel  which  was  to  inherit  the  fulfilled  destiny  of 
the  Old.  The  pains  at  which  Christ  was  to*  single 
out  and  educate  the  twelve  Apostles  are  plain  for 
everyone  to  see.  As  we  saw  in  the  last  chapter,  He 
prepared  new  stewards  or  husbandmen  to  replace 
the  faithless  ones  in  charge  of  God’s  vineyard. 
These  chosen  men  (less  one,  and  he  replaced),  are 
the  unquestioned  leaders  in  the  first  days  of  the 
Church,  while  still  the  Apostle’s  fellowship  was 
within  the  Old  Church  “  continuing  steadfastly 
with  one  accord  in  the  Temple.”  It  is  they  who 
were,  as  St.  Paul  said,  “  pillars  ”  (Gal.  ii:9).  Yet 
this  does  not  mean  that  the  Apostles  were  the 
Church.  The  Holy  Spirit  was  not  given  to  them 
alone.  Rather  the  whole  body  of  believers,  as  it 
grew,  shared  in  His  inspiration.  It  was  dowered 
with  a  diversity  of  spiritual  gifts  and  functions. 
So  much  so  that  the  analogy  of  the  human  body, 
with  its  different  members  and  organs  playing  their 
several  parts  in  the  life  of  the  one  body,  sprang 
readily  to  the  mind  of  St.  Paul  as  he  thought  of 
the  Church  and  described  it.  “  Now  ye  are  the 


THE  NEW  ISRAEL 


157 


Body  of  Christ  and  members  each  in  His  part. 
And  God  hath  set  some  in  the  Church,  first  apos¬ 
tles,  secondly  prophets,  thirdly  teachers,  then  pow¬ 
ers,  then  gifts  of  healings,  helps,  wise  counsels, 
divers  kinds  of  tongues  ”  (1  Cor.  xii  :28). 

The  Apostles  therefore  did  not  make  the  Church. 
It  was  not  put  together  by  them  or  by  anyone  else, 
as  men  put  together,  say,  a  trades’  union.  It  was 
not  made  by  the  adherence  of  individuals  ;  though, 
of  course,  if  there  had  been  no>  individuals  in  it  and 
coming  into  it,  it  would  not  have  existed  on  earth. 
It  was  there  for  all  concerned  just  as  it  had  been 
there  for  their  Master.  It  was  the  God-sent  thing 
which  was  there — there  to  be  entered,  to  be  ex¬ 
panded  and  developed,  as  it  was  led  forward  on  its 
world-mission  by  its  living  Head,  acting  in  it 
through  the  Holy  Spirit.  It  was  not  directed  by 
any  complete  and  preconceived  programme,  nor  in 
accordance  with  written  instructions.  Rather  it 
realised  the  fulfilment  of  the  Masters  promises 
that,  when  the  Spirit  was  come,  guidance  and  un¬ 
derstanding  necessary  for  the  work  committed  to 
it  would  be  forthcoming. 

It  had  tremendous  obstacles  to  surmount  and 
perplexities  through  which  to  be  piloted.  It  had  to 
learn  the  lesson,  the  most  difficult  for  any  Jew 
to  learn,  that  the  Old  covenant  and  law  in  being 
consummated  had  given  way  to  the  New.  It  had 
to  surrender  immemorially-revered  national  privi¬ 
leges.  It  had  to  realise,  what  St.  Paul  calls  “  the 
mystery  of  Christ,  which  in  other  generations  was 
not  made  known  unto  the  sons  of  men,  as  it  hath 


158  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


now  been  revealed  unto  His  holy  Apostles  and 
Prophets  in  the  Spirit:  to  wit,  that  the  Gentiles 
are  fellow-heirs  and  fellow-members  of  the  body.” 
It  had,  as  we  shall  see,  to  survive  disappointment 
about  the  second  coming  of  the  Lord. 

And  it  had  to  depend  for  its  existence  and  its 
prevalence  on  no>  external  credentials.  It  had  no 
New  Testament  in  its  hands  to  which  to  appeal. 
The  Gospel  of  God  was  enshrined  in  no  document. 
But  it  lived  in  the  hearts  and  minds  of  those  who 
had  been  with  Jesus,  It  was  verified  and  appropri¬ 
ated  by  those  who  accepted  their  witness. 

It  was  the  truth,  almost  beyond  belief,  certainly 
beyond  anticipation  or  invention,  of  the  all- 
suffering,  all-overcoming  love  of  God.  Held  in  the 
tenacious  grip  of  a  living  and  organised  society — 
the  organism,  the  body  of  which  Christ  was  the 
Head — it  was  given  to  the  world. 


XXIV 

THE  SECOND  COMING— I 


THE  early  Church,  as  was  said  in  the  last 
chapter,  had  many  lessons  to  learn  through 
the  guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  It  had  in 
particular  to  survive  the  disappointment — and  to 
profit  by  the  experience — of  its  first  expectation 
that  the  Christ  would  immediately  come  again  in 
glory  at  the  last  day. 

Here  we  reach  that  part  of  Christianity  which 
has  to  do  with  the  future.  It  is  technically  named 
jeschatology.  That  barbarous  word  means,  being 
translated,  the  Doctrine  of  the  Last  Things :  death, 
judgment,  heaven  and  hell. 

These  are  subjects  which  have  in  all  ages  drawn 
to  themselves  the  attention  of  the  human  heart, 
charged  with  all  its  mingled  fears  and  hopes.  They 
have  been  the  subjects  round  which  imagination, 
in  all  its  picture-making  power,  has  constantly 
played.  They  have  been  the  centre  of  dark,  morbid 
and  pagan  speculation.  Indeed,  it  may  fairly  be 
said  that  it  is  from  this  quarter  that  clouds  and 
mists  have  most  thickly  arisen  to  overshadow 
and  darken  the  glorious  light  of  the  Christian 
gospel. 

In  part  this  has  been  inevitable.  In  coming  to 
the  future  we  see,  in  the  famous  phrase,  “  through 
a  glass  darkly.”  Clear,  precise,  naked  vision  is  not 

159 


160  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


allowed  to  us  in  regard  to  the  future.  Yet  this 
does  not  account  for  all  the  veiling  of  the  gospel 
light  which  the  centuries  have  seen.  For,  as  we 
shall  see,  such  terrible  and  abominable  things  as 
manv  fervent  Christians  have  believed  about  hell — 
to  take  one  instance — point  to  the  distance  which 
has  separated  much  of  Christian  tradition  from;  its 
great  Original. 

We  have  to  face  the  problem  to-day  that  the  first 
Christians  lived  in  the  firm  expectation  of  the  im¬ 
mediate  second  coming  of  the  Lord;  and  that,  at 
any  rate,  in  the  sense  in  which  they  expected  it,  the 
event  did  not  occur.  It  is  quite  useless  to  minimise 
the  gravity  of  the  problem.  It  has  weighed  and 
will  weigh  heavily  on  many  minds.  It  is  said  that 
that  most — that  almost  ultra — sincere  Cambridge 
thinker  of  last  century,  Henry  Sidgwick,  was 
driven  out  of  Christian  conviction  by  this  great 
difficulty.  The  most  serious  element  in  the  problem 
is  not  so  much  the  mistaken  expectation  of  the 
early  Christians  as  the  question  whether  their  Mas¬ 
ter  was  mistaken  too.  Further,  there  is  the  for¬ 
midable  inference,  which  many  scholars  in  recent 
times  have  not  hesitated  to  draw  from  the  fact  that 
the  whole  New  Testament  period  is  dominated  by 
the  expectation  of  the  end  of  the  world — namely 
this,  that  Christian  ethic  has  no  valid  claim  to 
govern  the  life  of  a  world,  which,  in  fact,  has  not 
ended. 

Merely  to  state  the  problem  is  to  be  tempted  to 
run  away  from  it.  But  running  away  is  no  way 
of  escape.  To  attempt  to  run  is  to  be  overtaken 


THE  SECOND  COMING 


161 


by  that  from  which  we  run.  There  is  nothing  to 
do  but  to  try  to  meet  the  question. 

There  is  no  denying  that  the  first  Christians  ex¬ 
pected  the  “  time  to  be  short.’’  In  the  earliest  book 
in  the  New  Testament,  the  First  Epistle  to  the 
Thessalonians,  we  read  how  the  “  coming  of  the 
Lord  ”  was  expected  in  the  lifetime  of  those  who 
were  then  alive.  “  For  this  we  say  unto  you  by 
the  word  of  the  Lord,  that  we  that  are  alive,  that 
are  left  unto  the  coming  of  the  Lord,  shall  in  no 
wise  precede  them  that  are  fallen  asleep  ”  ( 1  Thess. 
iv :  1 5 ) .  Then  the  early  chapters  of  the  Acts  give 
a  clear  picture  of  the  little  Christian  community, 
as  looking  for  the  arrival  of  the  day  of  the  Lord. 
“  that  great  and  notable  day  ”  (Acts  ii  :20).  It  is 
in  that  mind  that  Peter  interprets  the  significance 
of  the  coming  of  the  Spirit.  That,  he  says,  is  what 
was  to  be  expected  “  in  the  last  days,”  as  said  the 
prophet  Joel  (Acts  ii:17).  Indeed,  much  of  the 
force  of  the  appeal  made  by  Jews  of  their  fellow- 
Jews  at  Jerusalem  came  from  the  believed  proxim¬ 
ity  of  the  “  times  of  the  restoration  of  all  things  ” 
(Acts  iii:21).  As  was  said  in  the  last  chapter, 
those  who  had  in  ignorance  crucified  the  Messiah 
were  given  another  chance  to  hear  and  to  repent 
by  those  who  were  witnesses  to  the  tremendous 
fact  that,  though  crucified,  He  was  nevertheless 
the  Messiah. 

The  very  air,  therefore,  which  the  followers  of 
Jesus  breathed  after  He  was  taken  from  them  was 
charged  with  eschatology.  This  fact  probably  ac¬ 
counts  for  the  communism,  of  the  Apostles’  fellow- 


162  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


ship  at  Jerusalem.  The  time  being  short,  there  was 
a  withdrawal  from  the  ordinary  business  of  life 
and  a  pooling  of  possessions.  This  experiment  led 
to  the  “  Saints  at  Jerusalem  ”  becoming  a  charge 
upon  their  fellow-Christians  elsewhere.  One  of 
St.  Paul’s  most  constant  endeavours  was  to  collect 
money  from  the  Gentile  Christians  for  the  relief  of 
the  Church  in  Jerusalem. 

It  is  clear,  then,  what  was  the  mind  of  that  com¬ 
pany — about  120  in  all — of  those  who  had  been 
with  Jesus.  The  Messiah  they  knew  had  come,  and 
He  was  about  to  come  again  to  bring  in  the  New 
Age — the  triumph  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Mean¬ 
while  they  were  in  the  intermediate  time,  which 
allowed  them  space  to  prepare  for  and  to  beg  others 
to  prepare  for  the  final  and  all-consummating  hour. 

The  hour  did  not  come.  Are  we,  then,  to  say 
that  they  had  been  misled  by  their  Master  or  that 
He  was  mistaken  in  what  He  had  led  them  to 
expect  ? 

A  decided  negative  to  both  questions  springs 
from  an  understanding  of  how  the  followers  of 
Jesus  came  to  have  any  gospel  at  all  to  give,  first 
to  their  fellow-Jews,  and,  later,  in  its  expanded 
significance,  to  the  Gentiles.  Their  expectation 
about  the  future  sprang  out  of  their  certainty  about 
the  past.  Such  expectation  seemed  the  right  corol¬ 
lary  to  the  tremendous  truth  of  God  which  had 
been  wrought  out  in  the  events  of  the  Death  and 
the  Rising  of  Jesus  and  the  Coming  of  the  Spirit. 
Their  main  certainty  was  about  God.  He,  as  we 
have  repeatedly  noticed,  had  been  in  question  when 


THE  SECOND  COMING 


163 


Jesus  died  upon  the  Cross.  He  had  been  in  self- 
vindicating  revelation  in  the  Resurrection.  Hence 
God  was  on  the  lips  of  those  witnesses.  “  This 
Jesus  did  God  raise  up,  whereof  we  are  all  wit¬ 
nesses.  .  .  .  God  .  .  .  hath  glorified  His  servant 
Jesus.  .  .  .  The  things  which  God  foreshewed  by 
the  mouth  of  all  the  prophets,  that  His  Christ 
(Messiah)  should  suffer,  He  thus  fulfilled”  (Acts 
ii:32;  iii :  13  ;  iii:18).  There  is  the  Jewish — the 
Messianic — Gospel  for  Jews.  It  had  taken  hold  of 
those  disciples  and  it  drove  them  out  to  share  it 
with  others. 

How  had  it  taken  hold  of  them?  By  means  of 
events.  It  had  not  been  understood  by  being  spoken 
about.  That  is  quite  evident  in  the  drama  of  the 
ministry.  No  words  of  Jesus  had  the  power  to 
admit  His  followers  into  a  full  understanding  of 
the  Father’s  will.  His  words  as  they  fell  into  their 
minds  were  inevitably  intermixed  there  with  the 
traditional  faith  and  current  expectations  of  Jews 
of  that  period.  And  the  intermixture  was  such 
that  they  never  had  a  clear  understanding  of  the 
fulfilment  of  the  Father’s  purpose  in  His  Messiah 
through  death,  until  the  death  had  occurred  and 
had  been  transformed  by  the  Resurrection. 

For  they  were  looking  for  a  Kingdom  of  al¬ 
mighty  power,  not  a  Kingdom  of  all-overruling 
love.  And  no  word  of  Jesus  could  persuade  them 
otherwise,  but  only  the  acting  out  of  the  literally 
incomprehensible  love.  But  when  acted  out  then  it 
was  there  to  be  witnessed  to.  Then  they  had  hold 
of  the  truth  of  God  faithful  in  promise  and  fulfil- 


164  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


ment.  They  had  something1 — and  that  the  very 
thing  for  Jews  to  receive — to  give  to  others.  But 
undoubtedly  that  truth  was  still  intermixed  in  their 
minds  with  current  Jewish  expectations  about  the 
future.  For  Jewry  of  that  time  was  all  agog  with 
what  scholars  call  Apocalyptic  expectations,  or  in 
other  words,  visions  of  the  future.  The  visions 
were  a  medley  of  poetic  and  imaginative  anticipa¬ 
tions.  They  contained  hopes  of  a  great  political 
liberation  for  the  Jewish  nation;  of  a  Messiah 
reigning  triumphant  in  judgment  over  the  nation’s 
foes;  of  the  coming  of  a  new  age  of  peace  and 
plenty;  of  the  final  and  catastrophic  ending  of  all 
things.  Such  hopes  were  in  the  minds  of  those 
essential  and  characteristic  Jews  whom  Jesus  drew 
to  Himself  by  the  announcement  of  the  coming  of 
the  Kingdom.  They  were  drawn  out  into  greater 
power  by  the  realisation,  at  Caesarea  Philippi,  that 
Jesus  was  the  Messiah.  They  were  alive,  full¬ 
blown,  in  the  hearts  of  those  who  followed  Jesus 
to  Jerusalem,  expecting  the  Kingdom  immediately 
to  appear.  And  though  they  were  quenched  by  the 
inexplicably  tragic  death  of  the  Messiah,  they  were 
rekindled  by  His  triumph  over  death.  (Witness 
that  significant  question  to  the  Risen  Lord :  “  Lord, 
dost  Thou  at  this  time  restore  the  Kingdom  to 
Israel?”  Acts  i:6).  And  there  is  no  doubt  they 
were  still  intermixed  with  the  first  Gospel  which 
they  preached  to  others. 


XXV 

THE  SECOND  COMING— II 


IT  was  seen  in  the  last  chapter  that  the  Gospel 
of  God,  which  in  the  very  first  days  was  com¬ 
mended  by  the  followers  of  Jesus  tO'  their 
brother- Jews,  was  intimately  intermixed  with  ex¬ 
pectation  about  the  future. 

They  were  in  “  the  last  days,”  immediately  pre¬ 
ceding  the  Last  Day  and  the  return  of  the  Lord  in 
final  judgment.  Unquestionably  they  were  disap¬ 
pointed  in  their  expectation,  and  the  period  covered 
by  the  New  Testament  is  marked  by  a  progressive 
change  of  emphasis  in  their  message,  consequent 
on  this  disappointment. 

Roughly  speaking,  the  emphasis  was  changed — 
the  centre  of  gravity,  so  to  say,  was  moved — from 
the  future  to  the  present.  The  Gospel  of  the  King¬ 
dom  became  not  only  the  announcement  of  a  new 
age  to  come,  but  the  sharing  with  others  there  and 
then  in  a  new  life  already  come — a  new  life  of  fel¬ 
lowship  and  love.  The  Lord,  in  whose  Name  that 
Gospel  was  preached,  was  realised  to  be  not  so 
much  withdrawn  into  heaven  thence  to  reappear  at 
the  Last  Day,  but  as  the  present  source  of  life, 
which,  though  enjoyed  under  conditions  of  mortal¬ 
ity,  was  already  eternal  life.  Heaven  became  not 
merely  a  future  state  beyond  this  world,  but  an 
immediate  reality.  “  Our  citizenship  is  ” — here 


165 


166  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


and  now,  says  St.  Paul — “  in  heaven.’*  St.  John  is 
positive  that  his  fellow-Christians  already  know 
what  eternal  life  is,  that  they  have  already  passed 
from  death  into  life,  that  they  are  walking  in  the 
light  which  is  of  God,  that  they  are  abiding  in  Him 
and  He  in  them. 

Not  that  future  hope  and  expectation  just  lapsed. 
The  Lord,  known  by  faith  and  love  in  the  present, 
was  still  to  come.  To  abide  in  love  is  to  be  pre¬ 
pared  for  His  coming.  “  Herein  is  love  made 
perfect  (by  abiding  in  love  with  others),  that  we 
may  have  boldness  in  the  Day  of  Judgment”  (1 
John  iv:17).  It  is  indeed  the  intimate  and  vital 
connection  between  the  present  and  the  future 
which  is  a  special  note  of  the  New  Testament 
throughout  its  course.  Life  in  the  present  is  what 
St.  Paul  calls  an  “  earnest  ” — a  forestallment — of 
the  life  to  come.  Life  here  therefore  receives  the 
enhancement  of  eternity.  It  is  charged  in  its  every 
moment  and  detail  with  eternal  worth  as  leading 
on  to  the  life  beyond.  It  is  the  present  testing 
place  of  children  of  God,  who,  for  all  their  mortal¬ 
ity,  have  an  eternal  destiny.  It  is  already  the 
sphere  where  judgment  is  in  process.  For  the 
exactions  of  daily  and  prosaic  existence — the  de¬ 
mands  of  all  kinds  of  human  relationship — inevi¬ 
tably  make  trial  of  men’s  capacities  for  love  and 
fellowship.  Judgment  is  in  process  now,  though 
its  verdict  or  outcome  lies  beyond. 

There  is  therefore  very  little  in  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  which  justifies  the  note  of  depreciation  of  this 
world  and  its  work  and  business  which  marks  a 


THE  SECOND  COMING 


167 


good  deal  of  Christian  tradition.  If  anyone  reads 
St.  Paul  carefully,  he  will  find  that  it  is  precisely 
his  sense  that  this  world  is  impermanent  and  about 
to  pass  when  the  Lord  comes  again,  that  drives  him 
urgently  to  insist  on  faithfulness  and  diligence  in 
the  round  of  daily  work.  It  is  in  view  of  the  day 
of  the  Lord  coming  as  a  thief  in  the  night  that  St. 
Paul  charges  his  brethren  “  to  study  to  be  quiet, 
and  to  do  your  own  business,  and  to  work  with 
your  hands,  ...  to  walk  honestly  toward  them 
that  are  without,  .  .  .  for  ye  are  all  sons  of  light, 
and  sons  of  the  day :  we  are  not  of  the  night,  nor  of 
darkness ;  so  then  let  us  not  sleep  as  do  the  rest,  but 
let  us  watch  and  be  sober  ”  ( 1  Thess.  iv  :1 1 ;  v  :5  ) . 

This  is  only  one  of  many  passages  in  which  it  is 
evident  that  the  all-powerful  sanction  for  energetic 
and  faithful  use  of  present  capacities  and  present 
opportunities  is  derived  from  the  belief  that  this 
order  of  things  is  transient  and  about  to  be  ended. 
(See,  for  instance,  the  wonderful  description  of  the 
excellencies  of  a  Christian  citizen  in  Romans,  chap¬ 
ters  xii  and  xiii.,  ending  with  “  And  this,  knowing 
that  it  is  high  time  to  awake  out  of  sleep.  .  .  .  The 
night  is  far  spent,  the  day  is  at  hand.”) 

We  have,  then,  indicated  how  Christians  in  the 
times  of  the  New  Testament  were  brought  through 
their  disappointment  at  the  non-arrival  of  the  com¬ 
ing  of  the  Lord,  and  were  led,  while  not  abandon¬ 
ing  their  future  hope,  to  learn  its  meaning  for  life 
in  the  present. 

The  question  then  arises :  How  is  all  this  related 
to  the  teaching  of  Jesus?  There  is  no  doubt  that 


168  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


He  spoke  about  the  future,  or  that  the  memorable 
chief  occasion  for  His  doing  so  was  when  His  dis¬ 
ciples  called  on  Him  to  admire  the  solidity  and 
grandeur  of  the  great  Temple  (Mark  xiii  :1  and  2). 
But,  more  than  this,  it  is  evident  that  Jesus  shared 
to  the  full,  with  the  Jewish  people,  in  that  view  of 
life  of  which  the  focus  lies  in  the  future  and  of 
which  the  main  feature  is  judgment.  This  view, 
when  analysed  out,  is  rooted  in  the  characteristic¬ 
ally  Jewish  belief  in  God  as  at  work  with  a  purpose 
in  history.  Life,  therefore,  is  one  long  opportunity 
for  acceptance  of  and  co-operation  with  the  move¬ 
ment  of  the  Divine  will.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
such  opportunity  is  neglected  or  defied,  life  is  the 
scene  of  men  being  overtaken  in  catastrophe  by 
that  which  they  have  defied.  If  the  purpose  of 
God,  arriving  in  mercy  from  on  high,  discovers 
His  children  merely  absorbed  in  “  the  cares  of  this 
life  and  the  deceitfulness  of  riches  ” — if  they  are 
found  in  unreadiness  to  correspond  with  God’s  pur¬ 
poses  of  salvation — then  inevitably  those  purposes 
bring  judgment  on  them.  Doors  opened  for  long 
are  in  due  time  shut.  Stewards,  of  whom  faithful¬ 
ness  is  expected,  are  overtaken  in  their  faithlessness 
by  a  summons  tO'  give  an  account  of  their  steward¬ 
ship.  Bridesmaids  are  awakened  at  midnight  to 
meet  the  bridegroom  with — or  without — oil  in  their 
lamps.  The  monotony  of  ordinary  and  uneventful 
history  is  interrupted  by  sudden,  all-exposing,  all- 
testing  emergency.  The  house  built  in  fine  weather 
is  suddenly  assaulted  by  a  torrent,  and  its  founda¬ 
tions  put  on  their  trial.  How  life  has  been  based, 


THE  SECOND  COMING 


169 


whether  in  harmony  with  the  moral  law  of  God  or 
in  indifference  to  it — whether  on  rock  or  sand — 
that  question  is  suddenly  and  decisively  asked.  In¬ 
dividuals  living  the  most  purely  physical  and  ma¬ 
terial  life  are  tapped  on  the  shoulder  and  asked  of 
what  spiritual  stuff  they  are  made.  Their  souls  are 
required  of  them.  Thus  life  throughout  its  course, 
both  in  its  quiet  periods  and  in  its  great  crises,  is  a 
matter  of  momentous  importance.  It  can  mount  to 
great  heights  of  achievement  or  fall  to  catastrophic 
depths  of  failure. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  this  was  the  way  in  which 
Jesus  interpreted  the  world.  What  is  more,  by  the 
whole  course  of  His  invitation  to  His  people  He 
put  that  interpretation  finally  to-  the  proof.  He  an¬ 
nounced  the  coming  of  the  Great  Day.  He  called 
men  to  climb  to  the  heights  of  ready  self-surrender 
to  God,  and  to  share  in  God’s  achievement  of  His 
purpose  in  the  world.  In  so  doing  He  offered  that 
generation  of  Israel  a  golden  opportunity.  But  in 
so  doing  inevitably  He  put  that  generation  on  its 
trial  and  brought  it  under  catastrophic  judgment. 
For  the  most  part  it  was  found  wanting,  it  was 
exposed  as  living  a  life  out  of  touch  with  God, 
unready  for  submission  to  Him  and  neglectful  of 
His  moral  law.  But  that  did  not  arrest  Jesus.  He 
saw  the  supreme  hour  was  in  arrival,  even  if  others 
were  unready  for  it.  So,  with  the  handful  of  those 
who  had  responded  to  His  call,  He  set  His  face 
to  meet  the  hour.  It  was  the  hour  of  the  Father, 
constant  in  His  purpose,  of  His  love  and  mercy. 
But  it  was  the  hour,  which,  coming  on  a  people 


170  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


unready  and  indifferent,  was  bound  to  bring 
catastrophe. 

The  whole  career  of  Jesus,  therefore,  was  fo¬ 
cussed  on  the  future.  Life  for  Him  was  big  with 
coming.  But  He  was  never  able  fully  to  explain  to 
others  what  was  to  come.  For,  as  we  have  seen 
so  often,  they  were  never  able  to  share  in  His  faith 
in  God  as  Father.  They  were  never  able  to  grip 
the  true  nature  of  God’s  Kingdom  and  King.  Only 
after  the  event — when  the  hour,  ungreeted  except 
by  Jesus,  had  come — did  they  understand.  No 
doubt,  there  as  they  looked  at  the  Temple  standing 
resplendent,  they  asked  about  the  future.  No 
doubt,  too,  He  spoke  of  it. 

But  what  He  said  must  inevitably  have  been 
hidden  from  them.  What  He  said  about  that 
which  lay  beyond  His  death  must  have  been  veiled 
from  them  by  the  dark  mystery  of  His  death. 
That  death  had  first  to  happen  and  issue  in  the 
coming  of  the  King,  though  crucified,  before  the 
veils  of  misunderstanding  were  pierced.  And,  even 
so,  they  did  not  fully  understand.  More  was  to 
come  which,  before  it  came,  was  beyond  their  un¬ 
derstanding.  The  Holy  Spirit  had  to  come;  Jesus 
Himself  had  to  come,  to  be  present  with  them  in 
the  Spirit ;  the  day  of  the  bringing  in  of  the  Gen¬ 
tiles  had  to  come;  the  day  of  the  Fall  of  Jerusalem 
and  the  falling  in  ruin  of  the  Temple  had  to  come 
— all  this  had  to  come  at  the  time  when  they  asked 
and  He  answered. 

The  truth  is,  that  little  can  be  made  of  their 
report  of  what  He  did  say  on  this  matter.  It  is  a 


THE  SECOND  COMING 


171 


confused  report,  in  which  different  things — the  Kail 
of  Jerusalem  and  the  end  of  the  world — run  into 
one  another. 

It  is,  further,  impossible  to  say  precisely  how 
much  Jesus  knew  of  the  future.  As  regards  the 
final  end,  He  Himself  said  He  did  not  know  (Matt. 
xxiv:36).  But  the  case  which  asserts  that  He  was 
mistaken  or  deluded  falls  before  the  fact  that  it  was 
through  His  correspondence  as  a  Son  with  the 
Father,  not  only  in  word  but  in  act  and  unto  death, 
that  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  of  His  love  did  come. 
It  falls  before  the  fact  that  He  came  and  ever 
comes  in  the  Spirit.  It  falls  before  the  fact  that 
successive  great  emergencies  in  history,  following 
upon  long  periods  of  mammon- worship  and  defi¬ 
ance  of  the  moral  order  of  the  world,  are  days  of 
His  coming  in  judgment  and  catastrophe,  and  yet 
in  unrelenting  mercy. 

We  to-day  should  know  that  this  is  true.  We 
live  in  a  Day  of  the  Lord,  when  the  Babylon  which 
we  have  built  on  the  sand  of  self-interest  is  fallen 
and  is  falling.  We  should  know,  amid  the  perplex¬ 
ity  of  men  and  the  distress  of  nations,  that  this  is 
yet  another  day  of  His  coming,  which,  if  so  re¬ 
ceived  will  be  a  day  of  the  coming  of  His  saving 
kingdom  of  love  and  service.  We  of  all  gener¬ 
ations,  with  our  faith  ratified  by  all  that  has  come, 
should  still  look  forward  to  the  Final  Coming,  be  it 
near  or  far — to  the  end  of  God’s  purpose  all  down 
the  ages,  when  Christ  shall  have  “  delivered  up  the 
Kingdom,  of  God,  even  the  Father,”  when  “  God 
shall  be  all  in  all.” 


XXVI 

LIFE  HERE  AND  BEYOND 


WE  come  now  to  another  of  the  great  sub¬ 
jects  of  eschatology  (the  Doctrine  of  the 
Last  Things) — to  the  belief  in  the  life  to 
come,  the  hope  of  immortality. 

Christianity  has  no  monopoly  in  the  faith  that 
death  is  not  the  end  of  existence.  Rather,  so  far 
back  as  the  historian  can  grope  in  the  story  of  the 
race,  he  finds  a  spectre-defying  hope,  now  smould¬ 
ering,  now  burning,  now  flickering,  now  flaming 
in  the  invincible  heart  of  man.  That  faith  has 
assumed  many  strange  forms  and  has  been  ex¬ 
pressed  in  many  pathetic  customs,  rites  and  super¬ 
stitions,  but  it  has  itself  been  more  than  they.  It 
has  been  something  instinctive  and  unutterable. 
But  it  has  persisted.  It  has  waxed,  not  waned, 
throughout  the  long  ages. 

Yet  Christianity,  though  without  monopoly  in 
the  matter,  has  its  own  unique  reinforcement  to 
give  to  man’s  instinctive  hope  of  survival  beyond 
death.  What  this  is  appears  when  we  consider  it 
by  contrast  with  two  other  main  ways  of  interpret¬ 
ing  the  relationship  between  this  life  and  the  be¬ 
yond.  Both  ways  are  partial  and  lop-sided.  On 
the  one  hand  the  unseen,  the  world  beyond  this 
world,  is  given  such  an  importance  that  reality  and 
value  are  denied  to  the  present  order  of  existence. 


172 


LIFE  HERE  AND  BEYOND 


173 


This  world  is  viewed  as  but  a  shadow-world,  or  as 
a  vale  of  tears,  or  as  a  prison.  It  is  that  from 
which  we  must  escape  if  we  are  to>  find  the  real. 
This  view  has  haunted  and  overcast  the  irrepress¬ 
ibly  religious  soul  of  India.  It  has  found  supreme 
expression  in  the  great  flights  of  Platonic  specula¬ 
tion.  It  has  undoubtedly  invaded  and  deeply  tinged 
a  great  deal  of  Christian  sentiment.  A  great  many 
so-called  Christian  hymns  suggest  that  this  life  is 
altogether  vanity,  that  it  is  only  a  weary-waiting 
place  for  passengers  to  Paradise. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  the  contrasted  view, 
which,  while  not  denying  the  beyond,  actually  and 
in  the  art  of  living  looks  upon  it  as  made  up  of 
shadows  and  twilight,  while  life  and  light  and  love 
are  here  and  only  here.  This  is  the  view  of  the 
roistering  drinking-songs  of  all  ages  and  climes. 
Life  is  a  cup  in  the  hand  and  at  the  lips — “  Come, 
let  us  drink  it  while  we  have  breath,  for  there’s 
no  drinking  after  death.”  It  is  a  pagan  philoso¬ 
phy  of  which  the  infection  is  betrayed,  when  a 
professed  Christian  speaks  of  a  young  man,  who 
has  fallen  breast-forward  on  the  field  of  battle,  as 
“  poor  boy.” 

As  against  both  these  one-sided  attitudes  there  is 
that  which  is  specifically  Christian.  As  ever,  this 
has  a  certain  doubleness  in  it.  For  Christianity  is, 
as  it  were,  a  cart  which  goes  on  two  wheels,  though 
men  are  often  tempted  to  drive  it  on  one.  There¬ 
fore,  as  against  those  who  say,  “  Shadows  are  here, 
life  is  beyond,”  or  those  who  say,  “  Life  is  here, 
beyond  are  shadows,”  the  Christian,  true  to  the 


174  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


mind  of  Christ,  says,  “  Life  here  and  more  life 
beyond.” 

The  truly  Christian  hope  of  immortality  springs 
not  out  of  the  sense  that  this  life’s  flowers  wither 
and  fade  (that  is  paganism),  but  out  of  the  sense 
that  the  beauty  of  a  rose-bud  has  in  it  now  the 
promise  of  eternity.  The  Christ-like  interpreter  of 
life  does  not  bring  in  the  next  world  just  to  correct 
or  make  up  for  the  miseries  of  this  world.  He 
looks  steadfastly  towards  it  as  that  which  will  fill 
to  the  full  that  which  already  abounds  with  Truth 
and  Beauty  and  Goodness.  The  life  to  come,  to 
him,  is  not  a  consolation  prize  for  those  who  run  an 
inevitably  futile  race  here.  It  is  the  goal  whither 
the  earlier  laps  of  the  race — already  and  in  this 
life — lead. 

The  ground  for  these  statements  is  of  course 
Jesus  Christ.  And  it  is  found  not  only  in  His 
words  but  in  His  intensely  zestful  life  on  earth  and 
in  His  clear-eyed  and  triumphant  dying.  “  O 
Paradise,  O  Paradise,  ’tis  weary  waiting  here !  ” 
has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  Him.  Here  for 
Him  was  the  scene  of  work  to  be  done — before  the 
night  came — such  as  could  employ  the  whole  ener¬ 
gies  of  youth  and  of  manhood.  Here  was  the 
battle-ground  in  a  war  of  which  the  issues  were  of 
absolute  import.  Here  was  the  field  below  whose 
surface  was  discoverable  a  treasure  of  eternal 
worth.  He  lived  a  life  here  therefore  which  was 
brimful  of  interest  in  all  the  features  of  present 
existence.  And  this  was  because  He  saw  through 
them  to  the  unseen.  He  saw  flowers  in  all  their 


LIFE  HERE  AND  BEYOND 


175 


fadingness,  yet  He  saw  them  as  signals  of  the 
eternal  beauty  of  the  Father.  He  saw  the  various 
daily  business  and  occupation  of  men  in  all  its 
routine  and  littleness  of  detail.  Yet  He  saw  it  as 
the  school  of  faithfulness  in  little  things  for  those 
whose  tested  capacities  would  fit  them  to  be  rulers 
over  many  cities.  He  felt — He  expressed — the 
mortality  of  all  that  “  the  moth  and  rust  doth  cor¬ 
rupt/’  but  He  saw  it  nevertheless  as  the  material 
which  even  now  could  be  lifted  above  corruption 
and  laid  up  as  an  imperishable  treasure  in  heaven. 
He  lived  in  this  world  as  the  Father’s  world,  which 
as  a  material  and  secular  order  spoke  to  Him  of  the 
Father.  He  did  not  need  to  soar  in  heaven- ward 
fancy  away  from  this  life  in  order  to  tell  others  of 
the  unseen,  but  He  asked  others  to  see  what  God  is 
as  they  looked  at  farmers  scattering  seed,  at  women 
baking  bread,  and  at  shepherds  seeking  sheep. 

And  so  living,  in  sensitive  and  delighted  contact 
with  all  things  natural  and  human,  He  declared 
that  life  was  a  treasury,  all  the  locks  of  which  could 
be  opened  and  all  its  riches  disclosed  by  those  who 
would  not  try  to  grasp  it  and  hoard  it,  but  would 
freely  and  recklessly  give  it  all  up.  He  laid  down 
finally  the  spiritual  law  that  self-saving  is  self- 
losing,  that  self-giving  is  self-finding.  And  He 
acted  out  the  law.  He  allowed  nothing  in  this 
world,  however  lovable  and  tempting,  to  hold  Him 
back  from  leaving  all  and  launching  out  upon  the 
unvoyaged  waters  of  death.  He  took  His  life, 
when  its  tide  was  at  the  full,  and  gave  it  to  the 
death.  He  set  His  face  towards,  He  rode  towards, 


176  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


He  rode  at,  He  overleaped  the  frowning  barrier, 
the  last  dark  fence  of  death. 

Thus  He  passed  from  life  to  life.  Thus  He  de¬ 
feated  “  the  last  enemy.”  Thus  He  carried  our 
mortal  nature  through  death — not  to  a  shadowy 
survival,  but  to  resurrection.  Thus  He  filled  this 
present  world  and  life  with  eternal  worth,  by  pass¬ 
ing  through  it  as  a  pilgrim  seeking  a  city,  by  run¬ 
ning  it  out  as  a  race  of  which  the  goal  was  heaven. 

The  Christian  attitude  to  life  therefore  ought  to 
be  in  harmony  with  the  life  of  Christ,  both  this- 
worldly  and  other-worldly.  We  ought  to  be  both 
in  the  world  and  yet  not  of  it.  We  ought,  we  may 
say,  to  be  amphibious — that  is,  to  be  creatures 
which  live  in  two  elements.  We  should  swim  in 
deep  waters  and  yet  also  belong  to  the  air  above  the 
waters,  and  rise  and  drink  it  in.  That  is,  we  should 
be  busily  occupied  with  the  work  and  interests  of 
every  day,  and  yet  we  should  not  be  sunk  in  them 
as  though  there  was  no  heaven  above  and  beyond 
them. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  should  not  disparage 
them  as  though  they  were  meaningless  or  worth¬ 
less,  just  because  they  are  things  that  must  pass. 
Rather  they  ought  to  have  a  heightened  significance 
because,  though  mundane  and  physical,  they  are 
already  bound  up  with  heaven.  That  this  is  true  is 
corroborated  by  the  familiar  experience  that  it  is 
only  when  we  come  to  leave  people  or  places  that 
we  realise  how  much  they  are  to  us.  It  is  only 
when  some  one  dies  that  others  recognise  his  full 
value.  Treat  people  and  things  as  having  only 


LIFE  HERE  AND  BEYOND 


177 


present  value  and  meaning,  and  such  value  and 
meaning  dwindles  and  fades  and  depreciates. 
Treat  them  in  the  light  of  that  which  is  beyond 
them  and  they  grow  the  more  precious — in  other 
words,  heaven  already  irradiates  earth.  This  mor¬ 
tal  already  puts  on  immortality. 


XXVII 

life  after  death 


THE  last  chapter  was  given  to  a  discussion  on 
the  bearing  of  the  life  to  come  on  life  here. 
The  question  remains  what  is  to  be  thought 
and  said  about  the  nature  of  the  life  after  death. 
It  must  be  said  at  once  that  those  who  wrote  the 
Gospels  did  not  pass  on  to  the  world  much  infor¬ 
mation  on  the  subject  from  the  Master  Himself. 
Happily  in  this  as  in  other  vital  matters  we  do  not 
need  to  depend  primarily  on  His  words,  but  on  His 
action.  His  action,  in  staking  all  upon  the  reality 
of  that  which  is  beyond  death,  should  be  the  sure 
and  unshakable  comfort  for  those  who,  in  the  war, 
gave  their  young  men- folk  to  death.  The  more 
anyone  grips  the  reality  of  Christ's  human  experi¬ 
ence,  the  more  His  life  is  seen  to  be  a  real  venture 
of  faith,  leading  Him  along  paths  never  trodden 
before,  teaching  Him  through  the  things  that  He 
suffered  what  He  had  not  known  before — the  more 
should  a  light,  inextinguishable  by  death,  spring 
up  around  those  who  faced  all  and  gave  all. 

Certainly  Christ  did  not  say  much  about  the  life 
to  come.  But  His  action  tells  us  enough.  It  looks 
as  though  He  wished  to  give  His  followers  a  main 
assurance  sufficient  for  life  and  work.  He  can 
hardly  have  wanted  them  to  spend  their  time  trying 
to  peer  through  the  veil  of  death,  to  the  neglect  of 


178 


LIFE  AFTER  DEATH 


179 


work  waiting  to  be  done  for  God  and  man.  For 
those  upon  whom  the  light  of  His  Gospel  has 
shone,  the  first  truth  about  all  the  pathetic  array 
of  spiritualistic  phenomena  should  be  that  they  are 
needless. 

Certainly  little  description  of  heaven  as  a  place 
has  come  to  us  from  Him.  This  fact  enforces  the 
truth  that  heaven  is  essentially  not  a  place  but  a 
relationship  to  God.  Pictorial  representations  of 
the  external  circumstances  of  heaven — pearly  gates 
and  golden  streets  and  harps  and  palms  and  endless 
choruses — these  are  all  very  well,  but  they  do  not 
attract,  and  to  many  they  suggest  great  ennui , 
as  though  heaven  were  a  never-ending  church¬ 
going.  But  the  essential  and  cardinal  note  of 
heaven  in  the  New  Testament,  compared  to  which 
all  descriptions  are  quite  secondary  and  accidental, 
is  the  seeing  and  being  with  Him,  the  joy  of  whose 
presence,  the  peace  and  freedom  of  whose  law  of 
love  have  already  been  tasted  on  earth. 

The  life  of  Jesus  on  earth,  as  our  Brother,  shar¬ 
ing  in  all  the  conditions  of  human  nature,  was  one 
persistent  yielding  O'f  Himself  to  the  constraining 
love  of  the  Father.  What  the  Father  was  to  Him 
(and  what  He  longed  that  the  Father  should  be  to 
others)  drew  Him  forward  steadfastly  and  undevi- 
atingly  through  every  trial  in  life  and  every  terror 
in  death.  When  the  crucial  hour  of  decision  and 
self-giving  arrived  it  is  the  Name  of  the  Father 
which  was  on  His  lips.  He  threw  Himself  forward 
into  the  Father’s  arms  crying,  “  Father,  I  come  to 
Thee !  ”  And  as  it  was  with  the  Master,  so  it  was 


180  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


with  His  followers.  Only,  the  thirst  and  longing 
of  their  souls  is  to  see  Him  who  loved  them  and 
gave  Himself  for  them.  “  When  we  see  Him,” 
says  St.  John;  “  To  be  with  Christ,  .  .  .  to<  be 
at  home  with  the  Cord,”  says  St.  Paul.  And  in 
the  Apocalypse,  full  as  it  is  with  the  imagery  of 
heaven,  the  same  essential  note  rings  out,  “  They 
shall  see  His  Face.” 

If  this  is  so,  if  heaven  is  the  completion  of  a 
union  between  man  and  God  already  begun  on 
earth,  then  heaven  is  also  companionship  with 
others.  For  the  love  of  God  cannot  be  just  a  prize 
for  individuals.  It  is  indivisibly  bound  up  with 
love  for  others.  So  St.  John  kept  reiterating.  To 
abide  in  God  is — here  and  now- — to  abide  in  love. 
By  abiding  in  love  for  others  we  abide  in  God.  To 
think  that  anyone  can  love  God  and  at  the  same 
time  be  out  of  love  for  others  is  to  think  a  lie,  and 
to  live  so  is  to  attempt  the  impossible.  Heaven, 
therefore,  being  union  with  God,  is  also  a  com¬ 
munion  with  others.  Belief  in  the  life  to  come  is 
also  a  belief  in  the  communion  of  saints.  It  is  the 
completion  in  both  respects  of  that  which  begins  on 
earth.  It  is  the  keeping  perfectly  of  the  two  in¬ 
separable  commandments  of  love  for  God  and  love 
for  man. 

This  truth  leads  on  to  another.  A  great  deal  of 
language  which  has  come  to  be  used  about  heaven 
is  suggestive  of  calm,  repose,  and  sleep.  But  this 
is  not  in  harmony  with  the  characteristically  Chris¬ 
tian  truth  of  God,  as  at  w'ork  with  the  activity  of 
love.  It  was  Greek  pagan  thought  which  envisaged 


LIFE  AFTER  DEATH 


181 


heaven  as  the  sphere  of  unbroken  calm,  and  the 
gods  as  dwelling  in  undisturbed  repose.  An  alto¬ 
gether  opposite  conception  rings  through  the  first 
words  of  the  Lord’s  Prayer.  They  ask  that  there 
may  be  on  earth  that  which  already  is  in  heaven, 
namely,  the  glorifying  of  the  Father’s  Name,  the 
sway  of  His  kingdom,  the  doing  of  His  will.  This 
accords  with  Christ’s  promise  of  greater  scope  for 
their  energies  in  the  future  to  those  who  have  been 
faithful  as  stewards,  as  servants  in  very  little 
things  here.  The  same  thing  is  implied  in  the 
answer  of  Christ  to  the  Sadducees — an  answer  all 
the  more  significant  as  being  the  emphatic  correc¬ 
tion  of  ideas  about  the  dead  which  they  brought  to 
Him.  They  evidently  were  thinking  of  the  dead 
as  being  in  a  lifeless  state,  as  being  “  dead  and  done 
with,”  at  any  rate  for  the  present.  Christ  told 
them  that  they  greatly  erred,  for  God  was  not  the 
God  of  the  dead,  but  of  the  living,  “  for  all  live 
unto  Him.” 

This  turns  the  flank  of  those  who  jeer  at  the 
endless  inactivity  of  Heaven.  Any  real  knowledge 
whatever  of  relationship  to  God  which  anyone  at¬ 
tains  here  is  linked  with  active  surrender  to  God 
and  with  service  for  Him,  or  else  it  is  counterfeit. 
It  is  a  delusion,  according  to  the  Master,  to  suppose 
that  you  can  enter  into'  relationship  with  God  by 
merely  saying,  “  Lord,  Lord.”  The  way  of  en¬ 
trance  is  the  doing  of  His  will.  Activity,  service, 
the  energy  of  love  are  the  obvious  implications  of 
such  a  saying. 

This  leads  on  yet  again  to  the  truth,  already 


182  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


touched  on  both  in  this  chapter  and  in  the  last,  that 
heaven  ( and  hell)  begin  here  and  that  now  is  the 
time  to  enter  it.  To  drift,  to  defer,  to  relegate  de¬ 
cision  to  the  future,  to  count  on  further  chances,  is 
the  habit  of  life  most  completely  out  of  accord  with 
the  mind  of  Christ.  His  urgent  advice  is  to  build 
now  on  the  rock  against  whatever  the  future  may 
bring;  to  get  oil  for  lamps  now  before  it  is  too 
late ;  to  deal  quickly  with  an  adversary  before  being 
overtaken  by  a  day  of  account.  He  even  lays  His 
finger  on  what  is  admirable  in  an  otherwise  rascally 
steward,  namely,  his  prompt  enterprise.  This  is 
the  austerity  of  Christ.  It  is  part  of  His  hatred  of 
humbug.  If  Heaven  is  union  with  God,  then  its 
essence  is  character.  And  character  is  in  the 
making  now.  And  what  is  in  the  making  tends  to 
permanence.  Christ’s  insistence  on  decision  is 
therefore  instant  and  unmitigated.  His  offer  to 
men  is  of  a  “  now  or  nover  ”  character.  He  bids 
men  be  ready  that  they  may  straightway  open  the 
door  to  Him  when  they  hear  Him  knock.  He  sets 
over  against  the  wisdom  of  such  readiness  the  fatal 
and  abiding  folly  of  those  who  are  overtaken  in  un¬ 
readiness — their  “  hearts  overcharged  with  surfeit¬ 
ing  and  drunkenness.” 

This  emphasis  on  the  need  for  present  decision 
needs  to  be  borne  in  mind  when  we  go  on  to  con¬ 
sider,  that  nothing  in  the  New  Testament  forbids 
us  believing  that  an  intermediate  period  intervenes 
between  our  lives  here  and  our  final  destiny.  There 
is  no  ground  in  the  New  Testament  for  the  expec¬ 
tation  that,  after  the  short  span  of  their  existence 


LIFE  AFTER  DEATH 


183 


here,  men  pass  at  once  to  Heaven  or  to  Hell.  But 
equally  there  is  no  ground  for  saying  that  this  life 
is  not  of  crucial  importance.  To  neglect  present 
chances  and  opportunities  in  the  prospect  of  there 
being  second  chances  is  self-deception.  The  second 
chance  may  find  us  less  ready  to  close  with  it  owing 
to  our  refusal  to  close  with  the  first.  Our  later 
state  may  be  worse  than  our  first.  That  there  will 
be  beyond  death  further  opportunities  of  being 
fully  won  by  and  given  to  God,  is  a  truth  which 
accords  with  life  as  we  know  it,  affording  as  it  does 
such  imperfect  chances  to  so  many  of  God’s  chil¬ 
dren  to  achieve  their  true  destiny. 

But,  if  anyone  thinks  about  it,  it  is  evident  that 
that  truth  heightens  the  importance  of  the  present, 
and  deepens  the  urgency  of  the  “  now  ”  in  “  now 
or  never.”  For  neutrality  or  a  cross-bench  attitude 
towards  moral  and  spiritual  issues  is  impossible. 
Life  is  such,  whether  we  like  it  or  no,  that  it 
abounds  in  opportunities  for  choice  and  decision. 
To  refuse  or  neglect  to  decide  is  itself  a  decision, 
and  it  makes  later  decision  more  difficult. 

On  the  other  hand,  present  decision  does  not 
justify  complacency  about  the  future.  Nothing  is 
more  horrid  than  the  spirit  of  self-congratulation 
about  what  is  in  prospect  beyond  the  veil  of  death. 
“  I  do  not  count  myself  to  have  apprehended,”  says 
St.  Paul,  “  but  one  thing  I  do,  forgetting  the  things 
which  are  behind,  I  press  on  towards  the  goal.” 


XXVIII 
HELL— I 


THIS  grim  subject  must  not  be  shirked.  If 
Heaven  be  union  here  and  hereafter  with 
God,  who  is  Love,  what  of  separation  from 
Him  ?  What  of  Hell  ? 

Anything  that  is  said  about  Hell  takes  its  place 
in  a  terrible  pedigree.  The  subject  comes  down  to 
us  loaded  with  black  and  savage  associations.  The 
doctrine  of  endless  torment  has  cast  the  darkest 
shadows  over  the  tidings  of  great  joy.  This  dis¬ 
cussion  must  begin  with  words  of  repudiation  of 
much  traditional  teaching  about  Hell-fire.  The  fol¬ 
lowing  is  a  fair  summary  of  such  teaching:  “  That 
God  will  after  death  pass  on  the  ungodly  a  sentence 
of  endless  pain,  of  endless  torments ;  that  from  this 
suffering  there  is  no  hope  of  escape,  that  of  this  evil 
there  is  no  hope  of  alleviation.  That  when  your 
imagination  has  called  up  a  series  of  ages,  in  appar¬ 
ently  endless  succession,  all  these  ages  of  sin  and 
agony,  undergone  by  the  lost,  have  diminished  their 
cup  of  suffering  by  not  so  much  as  a  single  drop, 
their  pain  is  then  no  nearer  ending  than  before.” 

This  is  the  appalling  prospect  which  has  been 
held  up  to  the  mind  and  consciences  of  men  by 
many  great  divines.  Three  quotations  taken  from 
as  many  different  branches  of  the  Christian  Church 
furnish  illustrations : 


184 


HELL 


185 


“  Little  child,  if  you  go  to  Hell  there  will  be  a 
devil  at  your  side  to  strike  you.  He  will  go  on 
striking  you  every  minute  for  ever  and  ever  with¬ 
out  stopping.  The  first  stroke  will  make  your  body 
as  the  body  of  Job,  covered  from  head  to  foot  with 
sores  and  ulcers.  The  second  stroke  will  make 
your  body  twice  as  bad  as  the  body  of  Job.  The 
third  stroke  will  make  your  body  three  times  as  bad 
as  the  body  of  Job.  The  fourth  stroke  will  make 
your  body  four  times  as  bad  as  the  body  of  Job. 
How,  then,  will  your  body  be  after  the  devil  has 
been  striking  it  every  moment  for  a  hundred  mil¬ 
lion  of  years  without  stopping?  Perhaps  at  this 
moment,  at  seven  o’clock  in  the  evening,  a  child  is 
just  going  into  Hell.  To-morrow  evening,  at  seven 
o’clock,  go  and  knock  at  the  gates  of  Hell  and  ask 
what  the  child  is  doing.  The  devils  will  go  and 
look.  They  will  come  back  again  and  say,  the  child 
is  burning.  Go  in  a  week  and  ask  what  the  child 
is  doing,  and  you  will  get  the  same  answer — it  is 
burning.  Go  in  a  year  and  ask;  the  same  answer 
comes — it  is  burning.  Go  in  a  million  years  and 
ask  the  same  question;  the  answer  is  just  the  same 
— it  is  burning.  So,  if  you  go  for  ever  and  ever, 
you  will  always  get  the  same  answer — it  is  burning 
in  the  fire.” 

“  Gather  in  one,  in  your  mind,  an  assembly  of 
all  those  men  or  women  from  whom,  whether  in 
history  or  in  fiction,  your  memory  most  shrinks, 
gather  in  mind  all  that  is  most  loathsome,  most 
revolting  .  .  .  conceive  the  fierce  fiery  eyes  of 
hate,  spite,  frenzied  rage,  ever  fixed  on  thee,  look- 


186  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


in g  thee  through  and  through  with  hate  .  .  .  hear 
those  yells  of  blaspheming,  concentrated  hate,  as 
they  echo  along  the  lurid  vault  of  Hell;  everyone 
hating  everyone  .  .  .  yet  a  fixedness  in  that  state 
in  which  the  hardened  malignant  sinner  dies,  in¬ 
volves,  without  any  further  retribution  of  God,  this 
endless  misery.” 

“  When  thou  diest  thy  soul  will  be  tormented 
alone ;  that  will  be  a  Hell  for  it ;  but  at  the  Day 
of  Judgment  thy  body  will  join  thy  soul,  and  then 
thou  wilt  have  twin  hells,  thy  soul  sweating  drops 
of  blood,  and  thy  body  suffused  with  agony.  In 
fire,  exactly  like  that  we  have  on  earth,  thy  body 
will  lie,  asbestos-like,  for  ever  unconsumed,  all  thy 
veins  roads  for  the  feet  of  pain  to  travel  on,  every 
nerve  a  sting,  on  which  the  Devil  shall  for  ever  play 
his  diabolical  tune  of  Hell’s  unutterable  lament.” 

More  even  than  this  is  the  vile  suggestion,  which 
has  too  often  crept  into  so-called  Christian  teach¬ 
ing,  that  the  bliss  of  the  “  saved  ”  is  heightened  by 
the  contemplation  of  the  agonies  of  the  lost.  Here 
again  quotations  are  available  from  widely  different 
sources. 

“  That  the  Saints  may  enjoy  their  beatitude  more 
thoroughly,  and  give  more  abundant  thanks  for  it 
to  God,  a  perfect  sight  of  the  punishment  of  the 
damned  is  granted  them.” 

“  Therefore  the  elect  shall  go  forth  to  see  the 
torments  of  the  impious,  seeing  which  they  will  not 
be  grieved,  but  will  be  satiated  with  joy  at  the  sight 
of  the  unutterable  calamity  of  the  impious.” 

“  The  view  of  the  misery  of  the  damned  will 


HELL 


187 


double  the  ardour  of  the  love  and  the  gratitude  of 
the  Saints  in  Heaven.” 

“  This  display  of  the  divine  character  will  be 
most  entertaining  to  all  who  love  God — will  give 
them  the  highest  and  most  ineffable  pleasure ; 
should  the  fire  of  this  eternal  punishment  cease,  it 
would  in  a  great  measure  obscure  the  light  of 
Heaven,  and  put  an  end  to  a  great  part  of  the 
happiness  and  glory  of  the  blessed.” 

There  is  nothing  to  be  wondered  at  in  the  vio¬ 
lence  of  the  reaction  which  such  degraded  doctrine 
has  set  up  in  countless  hearts.  Views  which  repre¬ 
sent  God  as  doing  that  which  the  most  heartless  of 
human  beings  would  not  do,  have  promoted  pas¬ 
sionate  and  far-reaching  scepticism.  They  have 
been  met  full-face  by  men  like  John  Stuart  Mill, 
who  roundly  asserted  that,  if  Hell  was  the  penalty 
for  believing  that  the  goodness  of  God  was  not 
akin  to  that  which  we  recognise  as  goodness  in 
men — “  to  Hell  I  will  go.” 

Nor  is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that  a  vision  of 
cruelty  at  the  heart  of  things  has  reacted  power¬ 
fully  in  encouraging  men  in  cruelty.  Fires  have 
been  lit  on  earth  as  a  counterpart  and  anticipation 
of  the  everlasting  burning.  “  As  the  souls  of 
heretics  are  hereafter  to  be  eternally  burning  in 
Hell,”  so  Bloody  Mary  said  in  defence  of  her  per¬ 
secution,  “  there  can  be  nothing  more  proper  than 
for  me  to  imitate  the  divine  vengeance  by  burning 
them  here  on  earth.” 

It  is  useless  to  deny  that  the  clear  waters  of  the 
Gospel  of  the  love  of  God  have  been  deeply  stained 


188  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


and  defiled,  as  by  black  poison,  by  such  savage 
thoughts  of  men  about  endless  torment. 

Such  a  judgment  can  only  rightly  be  passed  if  it 
is  accompanied  by  an  attempt  to  account  for  the 
development  of  teaching  so  greatly  at  variance  with 
Jesus  Christ. 

The  main  reason  for  such  a  development  is  the 
difficulty ,  encountered  in  full  force  by  Jesus  during 
His  ministry ,  which  besets  us  all  of  really  believing 
in  the  love  of  God.  Jesus  all  His  life  through  had 
in  trust  for  others  the  truth  of  the  Father  which 
others  found  too  good  to  be  true.  That,  as  we 
have  frequently  noticed,  emerged  into  clearest  re¬ 
lief  in  the  inability  of  the  disciples  to  understand 
(before  Christ  died)  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  was 
not  a  kingdom  of  irresistible  force,  but  a  kingdom 
of  resistible  love.  It  emerged  in  the  plain  assump¬ 
tion  on  the  part  of  specially  religious  Jews  that  God 
had  favourites,  and  that  therefore  “  publicans  and 
sinners  ”  were  not  dear  to  Him.  It  emerged  in 
the  thought  of  God  implied  in  the  disciples’  sugges¬ 
tion,  that  they  should  call  down  fire  out  of  heaven 
on  those  who  were  inhospitable  to  Jesus.  It 
emerged  in  their  request  for  seats  on  the  right  hand 
and  on  the  left  in  the  Kingdom.  Right  away  to 
His  death  there  were  in  the  Master’s  heart  “  things 
of  God  ”  which  could  not  enter  into  others’  hearts. 
All  that  was  left  for  Him  to  do  was  to  act  out  the 
inconceivable ,  to  make  good  to  others  what  was  too 
good  for  them  to  believe.  It  is  the  divine  action 
primarily  (as  compared  with  any  divine  words) 
which  is  the  essential  revelation  of  God.  This 


HELL 


189 


must  be  borne  in  mind  in  any  discussion  of  the 
report  of  Christ’s  words,  coming  to  us  as  they  do 
through  the  medium  of  minds  congenitally  infirm 
(as  all  our  minds  are)  in  fully  and  really  seizing 
the  truth  of  God’s  love.  It  is  the  truth  acted-out, 
to  which  the  first  Christians  were  witnesses,  not 
truth  merely  spoken  out.  “  God  commended  His 
love  towards  us,  in  that  while  we  were  yet  sinners 
and  enemies,  Christ  died  for  us,” 

There  is  the  one  foundation  once  laid.  It  is  the 
truth  of  God  made  known  in  Christ.  In  the  earliest 
days  St.  Paul  recognised  the  danger  of  the  founda¬ 
tion  being  overlaid  by  layers  of  material  of  very 
different  value.  “  For  other  foundation  can  no 
man  lay  than  that  which  is  laid,  which  is  Jesus 
Christ.  But  if  any  man  buildeth  on  the  founda¬ 
tion,  gold,  silver,  costly  stones,  wood,  hay,  stubble ; 
each  man’s  work  shall  be  made  manifest:  for  the 
day  shall  declare  it.” 

And,  since  the  earliest  days,  the  process  of  over¬ 
laying  has  continued.  It  would  take  too  long  fully 
to  illustrate  the  process.  But  the  overlaying  of  the 
New  Testament  by  the  Old  is  a  glaring  instance. 
The  whole  of  Scripture  came  to  assume  such  a 
position  in  men’s  reverence  that  they  drew  indis¬ 
criminately  upon  Old  and  New  Testament  for  their 
idea  of  God.  And  in  doing  so,  unwittingly  they 
have  gone  far  to  adulterate  the  truth  of  the  Father 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  with  the  idea  of  Him  as — 
say— plaguing,  blighting,  and  blasting  His  children. 

Other  instances  are  the  various  legalist,  monarch¬ 
ist  conceptions  of  God,  derived  from  the  current 


190  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


politics  of  different  times,  which  have  tended  to 
make  of  God  a  supremely  magisterial  figure,  aloof 
from  and  out  of  sympathy  with  His  wayward  chil¬ 
dren.  There  are  also  the  effects  of  analytical  the¬ 
ology  which  have  meant  the  dividing  of  the  Deity 
into  so  many  attributes,  love  included.  The  love  of 
God  has  thus  come  to  be  viewed  as  alternating  with 
His  justice,  or  as  at  variance  with  His  power.  God 
has  been  thought  of  as  fluctuating  between  love  and 
wrath.  Whereas  if  the  original  Gospel  be  true  that 
He  is  Love,  then  His  power,  His  justice,  His  holi¬ 
ness,  His  wrath  must  be  attributes  of  His  love  and 
not  separate  from  or  alternative  to  it. 

Then,  lastly,  there  is  the  perennial  inclination  of 
our  confusedly  guilty  and  selfish  hearts  to  think 
several  times  about  ourselves  before  ever  we  think 
of  God.  This  has  meant  virtually  the  placing  of 
sin  and  of  fears  about  our  own  salvation  at  the 
centre  of  our  system  of  religion  instead  of  God  and 
His  grace.  It  has  allowed  a  spirit  of  selfish  con¬ 
gratulation  about  salvation  to  creep  in  among 
Christians,  even  to  the  point  of  their  gloating  over 
others’  loss.  That  spirit  has  tarnished  certain 
golden  words  of  Christ  by  calling  them  the  Parable 
of  the  Prodigal  Son.  But  the  point  of  the  parable, 
directed  as  it  was  at  self-congratulating  and  con¬ 
temptuous  Pharisees,  is  not  primarily  the  sin  of  the 
son — though  that  sin  was  flagrant — but  the  love, 
despite  the  sins,  of  the  Father. 

In  such  ways — and  in  many  more — has  idolatry 
been  at  work,  which  is  the  making  of  God  in  an 
image  accordant  with  our  own  unmodified  concep- 


HELL 


191 


tions.  Christ  appealed  to  men’s  idea  of  what  love 
is.  He  said,  “  You  know  what  it  is,  but  how  much 
more  is  the  Father’s  love.”  That  “  how  much 
more  ”  has  been  forgotten.  Thus  have  veils  been 
spread  over  the  light  of  the  Gospel  of  God.  Thus 
has  He  been  represented  in  ways  repulsive  to  con¬ 
science  and  reason. 


XXIX 


HELL— II 

IN  the  last  chapter  we  tried  to  clear  away  from 
the  subject  of  Hell  some  of  the  associations  of 
cruelty  and  immorality  which  have  come  to 
cluster  round  it  in  the  course  of  the  centuries. 

The  question  now  is :  What  remains  ?  What  is 
it  of  tremendous  awe  and  solemnity  which  cannot 
be  cleared  away  as  so  much  rubbish  overlaying  the 
one  foundation  once  laid,  even  Jesus  Christ?  That 
there  is  something  tremendous — something  which 
utterly  condemns  mere  easy-goingness — in  the 
original  Gospel  is  evidenced  by  the  very  vehemence 
of  the  writers,  many  of  them  most  saintly  men, 
whose  words  we  have  repudiated. 

It  is  fatally  easy  to  slip  into  thinking  that  the 
Gospel  of  God,  Who  is  Love,  is  a  softly  indulgent 
and  loosely  sentimental  thing.  For  the  very  word 
love  has  been  prostituted  by  sentiment.  It  has  as 
it  were  been  coated  with  sugar.  Whereas  in  reality 
the  more  truly  love  is  worthy  the  name ,  the  more 
plainly  does  it  contain  within  itself  something  ir- 
reducibly  terrible  and  the  more  trucelessly  is  it  op¬ 
posed  to  evil.  The  fact  that,  in  reaction  from  the 
blood  and  thunder  of  preachers,  men  of  the  world 
have  conceived  for  themselves  a  God  of  indulgent 
good  nature — “  Le  Bon  Dieu  ” — who  will  not  be 
too  hard  on  any  of  us  no  matter  what  we  do,  is  but 


192 


HELL 


193 


another  instance  of  what  we  laid  stress  in  the  last 
chapter,  namely,  that  we  perpetually  find  it  beyond 
us  to  apprehend  what  the  full  reality  of  love  is. 

But  as  a  matter  of  fact  human  experience 
abounds  in  testimony  to  the  nature  of  love  as  made 
up  of  elements  compared  to  which  mere  indulgence 
is  but  a  caricature.  A  purely  indulgent  mother  is  a 
very  poor  friend  to  her  child.  Human  society,  if  it 
is  governed  by  the  spirit  of  sheer  moral  toleration, 
soon  festers.  What  men  in  their  hearts  most  fear 
to  violate  is  someone  else’s  love  for  them.  They 
are  prepared  to  exchange  very  lightly  with  one  an¬ 
other  in  a  smoking-room  tales  of  what  they  call 
their  “  peccadilloes.”  But  many  of  them  would 
have  their  tongues  cut  out  rather  than  tell  them  to 
their  mothers.  A  schoolboy  is  remembered  as 
being  thrown  into  an  agony  of  fear  when  he  real¬ 
ised  that  after  writing  two  letters,  one  to  his  mother 
and  the  other — a  “  smutty  ”  one — to  a  friend,  he 
had  put  the  letters  into  the  wrong  envelopes.  Most 
of  us  will  remember  the  strange  dread,  mixed  with 
strong  longing,  which  we  were  in  as  children  when 
we  had  to  “  own  up  ”  to  those  who  loved  us. 

All  this  points  beyond  mistake  to  that  in  love 
which  is  travestied  when  love  is  thought  of  as 
merely  soft.  Indeed  “  Le  Bqn  Dieu  ”  though  he  is 
fashionable,  is  not  really  enthroned  in  many  hearts 
or  consciences.  For  the  moral  sense  of  men  tells 
them  that  such  a  god  as  he  is  of  no  use  in  a  world 
where  right  is  right  and  wrong  is  wrong.  For  the 
maintenance  of  the  absoluteness  of  moral  distinc¬ 
tions  is  a  matter  of  life  or  death.  Everything  most 


194  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


precious  to  the  race — all  dogma  apart — is  imper¬ 
illed  by  smudging  such  distinctions. 

Suppose  there  are  wounded  men  lying  out  after 
a  battle.  Suppose  wounded  man  A  gives  water  to 
wounded  man  B,  and  suppose  wounded  man  C 
crawls  up  to  wounded  man  D  and  stabs  him  in  the 
stomach.  If  the  moral  distinction  between  the  acts 
is  not  absolute  (no  matter  what  mixture  of  motive 
may  have  come  into  them),  then  it  is  no  future 
heaven  or  hell  which  is  at  stake,  but  the  very  ele¬ 
mentary  basis  of  present  human  society.  To  say 
therefore  that  love  is  terrible,  is  but  to  say  that 
there  is  a  moral  law  which  it  is  awful  to  violate. 
And  our  consciences  know  this,  perhaps  dimly,  but 
they  know  it. 

Now  when  we  come  to  the  foundation  once  laid 
in  Jesus  Christ  we  come  to  a  crime  done  by  man. 
To  deny  it  is  to  make  moral  nonsense  of  the  uni¬ 
verse.  On  any  showing  the  treatment  He  received 
from  others  was  wrong.  But  not  only  so,  His  love 
was  received  with  repudiation.  That  is  the  in- 
eradicably  tremendous  element  in  the  Gospel  story, 
when  the  Father’s  love  was  offered  to  His  children 
they  rejected  it.  And  what  is  more,  as  regards 
ourselves,  we  go  on  rejecting  it.  It  is  calling  dark¬ 
ness  light  to  say  that  this  doesn’t  matter.  There  is 
no  ground  whatever  for  bringing  in  the  support  of 
some  sweet  sentimentalist  called  Jesus  to  support 
so  immoral  a  contention. 

The  story  therefore  of  God’s  offer  to  men 
through  His  Son  is  interwoven  with  emphasis  on 
the  sin  of  its  rejection.  There  was  a  great  wrong 


HELL 


195 


done,  and  it  was  done  by  men  in  the  exercise  of 
that  freedom  which  Jesus  so  deliberately  and  un¬ 
failingly  respected.  He  turned  away  from  every 
method  but  that  of  winning  the  free  response  of 
others.  It  is  not  to  rely  on  any  one  text,  nor  to 
take  too  literally  this  or  that  bit  of  imagery  as  used 
by  Christ,  to  say  that  He  did  not  shrink  from  de¬ 
claring  the  tremendousness  of  the  consequences 
which  attend  upon  the  repudiation  and  the  frustra¬ 
tion  of  the  love  which  He  offered  to  men.  Christ 
could  never  have  won  the  place  that  He  occupies  in 
history  if  He  had  not  been  the  whole-hearted  cham¬ 
pion  of  the  moral  law.  He  counted  implicitly  on 
men’s  moral  sense.  He  saw  that  law  in  operation, 
and  He  declared  what  He  saw.  He  saw  men  pass¬ 
ing  under  judgment.  He  saw  men  coming  to  the 
light.  He  saw  them,  too,  falling  into  the  “  outer 
darkness.” 

Yet,  of  course,  that  is  not  all.  He  did  not  merely 
leave  those  who  were  found  in  enmity  to  God  under 
condemnation.  He  did  not  leave  those  who  refused 
to  come  to  the  Father’s  feast  in  their  self-exclusion. 
As  we  have  said  so  often,  He  went  on  to  act  out — 
under  conditions  of  rejection — the  love  which  loves 
its  enemies  and  forgives  unto  seventy  times  seven. 
Through  His  incorruptible  loyalty  to  the  Father, 
the  Father’s  love,  which  His  children  repudiated, 
sought  until  it  found  them.  The  Cross,  interpreted 
by  the  trusting  prayer  of  Him  who  hung  upon  it, 
declares  that  the  love  of  God  will  never  let  His 
children  go. 

The  Gospel  of  God  therefore  is  not  the  story  of 


196  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


God  making  an  impotent  offer  to  men,  which  to 
their  ruin  they  repudiate.  Rather  it  is  the  mighty 
act — the  act  of  love  which  is  power — whereby  God 
set  men  free  from  all  that  held  them  captive  in 
lovelessness. 

But  does  that  mean  that  all  must  necessarily 
enter  into  the  freedom  thus  won  for  them?  Does 
it  mean  that  all  must  be  saved?  Certainly  from 
God’s  side  the  inextinguishable  longing  is  for  each 
and  every  one  of  His  children  into  whatsoever  far 
country  they  may  have  gone.  He  will  never  give 
anyone  up.  The  notion  therefore  of  His  regarding 
with  indifference  myriads  of  His  children  endlessly 
tormented  must  be  struck  out  of  our  minds. 
Rather  He  will  use  every  means,  stern,  remedial, 
purifying  to  work  upon  them  that  at  last  they  may 
turn  and  come  home. 

Yet,  even  so,  the  possibility  of  an  ultimate  and 
final  rejection  of  God  by  men  cannot  be  excluded, 
if  God  remains  what  He  was  revealed  to  be  in 
Christ,  and  if  we  remain  free — if  He  is  our  Father 
and  we  are  His  children.  That  is  the  possibility 
which  lends  such  fearful  urgency  to  the  tones  of 
Christ’s  warnings — “  Choose  now,”  He  says,  “  or  it 
may  be  that  you  will  never  choose  ” — it  is  the  possi¬ 
bility  of  final  self-exclusion  from,  the  love  of  God. 

But  what,  then,  of  those  finally  sel f -excluded  ? 
What  of  their  destiny?  Here  agnosticism  is  the 
only  wisdom.  We  do  not  know.  We  “  know  only 
in  part.”  It  is  as  though  we  cannot  see  the 
meeting-point  of  parallel  lines.  Those  lines  repre¬ 
sent  on  the  one  hand  the  love  of  God,  on  the  other 


HELL 


197 


the  freedom,  however  partial,  of  His  children.  No 
system  of  thought  has  ever  solved,  or  tried  to  solve, 
the  problem  of  the  relationship  between  God’s  will 
and  human  wills,  without  doing  violence  either  to 
His  love  or  to  our  freedom.  There  are  indeed 
depths  beyond  our  plumbing,  there  are  ways  of  God 
beyond  our  searching  out. 

It  would  take  a  volume  to  examine  all  the  pas¬ 
sages  which  contain  reports  of  Christ’s  warnings. 
They  must  be  read,  as  we  said  previously,  with  the 
remembrance  that  the  reports  come  to  us  from  men 
who,  like  everyone  else,  were  proved  to  be  incapable 
of  grasping  what  the  Father’s  love  is.  In  the  pro¬ 
cess  of  carrying  out  the  Gospel  of  that  love  and  of 
having  it  often  rejected,  those  men  may  have  let 
tones  of  human  vengefulness  and  cruelty  creep  into 
their  report  of  the  Master’s  word. 

But  allow  that  possibility,  and  yet  the  main  sub¬ 
stance  of  the  warnings  correspond  with  the  heights 
and  depths  of  experience.  They  maintain  the  ab¬ 
solute  moral  distinctions.  They  declare  that  to  be 
willingly  in  union  with  God  is  to  be  in  the  light; 
that  to  be  wilfully  separated  from  God  is  to  be  in 
the  outer-darkness.  It  would  be  treason  to  human¬ 
ity  to  empty  them  of  meaning  or  to  gloze  them 
over.  For  they  are  bound  up  with  the  hope  of  the 
final  victory  of  good.  And  for  the  individual,  while 
each  should  refrain  from  passing  words  of  judg¬ 
ment  on  others,  and  still  more  from  gloating  over 
them,  they  must  remain  matters  of  life  or  death. 

This  also  may  be  said,  that  scholars  have  estab¬ 
lished  that  certain  words  used  by  Christ  have  been 


198  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


maltreated  in  the  process  of  translation,  and  that 
they  do  not  form  a  legitimate  basis  for  the  doctrine 
of  endless  torment.  Damnation  should  be  condem¬ 
nation,  everlasting  should  be  age-long  or  for  the 
age,  hell  should  be  Hades  or  Gehenna.  (But  here 
I  must  refer  readers  to  such  a  book  as  Dr.  J.  Pater¬ 
son  Smyth’s  The  Gospel  of  the  Hereafter.) 

Finally,  it  has  been  our  concern  in  regard  to  all 
the  great  questions  of  the  future  which  we  have 
discussed  in  the  last  six  chapters,  to  lay  stress  on 
this — that  a  right  mind  about  them  depends  not  on 
trying  to  pierce  the  veils  which  hide  the  future 
from  us,  but  on  learning  the  lessons  of  the  present. 
Life — eternal  life — is  here  already,  it  is  not  only  to 
come.  Judgment  is  already  in  process.  Heaven — 
the  heaven  of  peace  with  God  and  man — is  to  be 
entered  now. 

And,  lastly,  there  is  hell  on  earth.  Ask  a  brother 
or  a  son  about  Flanders,  and  he’ll  tell  you  if  this 
was  not  true.  Read  any  faithful  book  which  tells 
you  of  the  reality  of  social  ills  and  oppressions  of 
modern  civilisation.  Read  the  daily  newspapers’ 
record  of  pathetic  moral  tragedy  and  despair. 
Read  them  for  yourselves  first  hand  in  the  life 
around  you.  Finally,  ask  your  own  heart  of  its 
own  bitterness.  “  There  is  no  harder  hell  than 
sin.”  And  sin  is  self.  Individually,  socially,  na¬ 
tionally,  the  world  has  idolised  self-interest.  We 
are  learning  the  consequences,  and  it  is  a  bitter  les¬ 
son.  But,  what  if  we  learnt  it?  What  if  we  saw 
that  we  were  in  a  “  far  country”?  What  if  we 
came  to  ourselves  and  turned  home  to  God  ? 


XXX 


THE  VIRGIN-BIRTH 

EARLIER  in  this  book  we  deliberately  left  on 
one  side  the  birth  of  the  Christ.  We  did 
not  begin  at  Bethlehem :  we  began  “  when 
Jesus  came  unto  Galilee,  preaching  the  Gospel  of 
God.”  We  did  not  wish  to  beg  any  questions  about 
Jesus,  but  to  start  from  the  point  at  which,  to  the 
eyes  of  those  who  followed  Him,  He  came  just  as 
a  man  among  men.  In  other  words,  we  wished  to 
give  a  fair  trial  to  the  supposition,  which  does  de¬ 
mand  trial,  that  Jesus  was  only  another  man,  and 
that  that  is  the  real  heart  of  the  matter  when 
stripped  of  all  doctrinal  and  devotional  wrappings. 
We  have  seen  that  this  supposition  breaks  down 
entirely.  For  it  fails  to  account  for  the  certain 
fact,  namely,  that  the  men  who  followed  Jesus 
were  put  into  possession  of  a  Gospel  of  God,  which 
they  carried  as  a  blazing  light  into  the  prevailing 
“  twilight  of  the  gods.”  Doubtless,  then,  there  are 
many  differences  to  be  detected  between  the  various 
writers  and  the  various  strata  of  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment.  It  is  possible  to  play  off  St.  Peter  against 
St.  Paul  and  both  against  St.  John.  But  the  dif¬ 
ferences  are  secondary  compared  to  the  main  thing 
which  is  common  to  them  all,  and  makes  them  of 
one  mind.  That  main  thing  is  conviction  about 
God.  Whether  St.  Peter  is  saying  in  the  earliest 


199 


200  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


days  at  Jerusalem  :  “  The  God  of  Abraham  .  .  . 
hath  glorified  His  servant  Jesus  ” :  or  in  his  letter, 
“  Blessed  be  the  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  ” :  whether  it  be  St.  Paul  avowing  that, 
“  God  commendeth  His  love  towards  us  ” :  whether 
it  be  St.  John  throwing  an  intense  energy  into  his 
message,  “  God  is  light  and  in  Him  is  no  darkness 
at  all  ” — there  is  an  identity  of  evangel  and  con¬ 
viction  in  them  all.  They  are  one  and  all  witnesses 
to  something  from  God,  a  sending,  a  coming,  an 
arrival  from  God.  And  the  something  is  Jesus 
Christ,  come  from  God,  not  from,  below  but  from 
above.  God  has  come  forth  in  Him.  The  love  at 
the  very  heart  of  things  has  come  down  and  been 
revealed  in  terms  of  a  human  life.  Through  the 
sheer  humanity  of  Jesus  deity  has  been  self- 
disclosed.  The  love  which  took  Jesus  to  the  Cross 
manifested  the  eternal  self -giving  of  God  Himself. 

That  is  whither  we  are  led  in  the  trial  of  our 
supposition.  And  from  this  point  we  turn  back  to 
consider  the  question  of  the  Virgin-Birth. 

There  is  much  wavering  about  it  in  many  minds. 
This  is  due  partly  to  the  fact  that  the  evidence  for 
the  Virgin-Birth  is  not  very  strong;  partly  to  a 
desire  to  be  rid  of  the  supernatural ;  partly  to  a  be¬ 
lief  that  that  mode  of  birth  means  little  or  nothing; 
partly  to  a  jealousy  for  the  sanctity  of  married 
love;  partly  to  a  fear  lest  the  real  humanity  of 
Jesus  should  be  whittled  away  by  the  fact  of  His 
being  virgin-born. 

What  shall  we  say? 

Anyhow  the  real  humanity  is  there  in  the  New 


THE  VIRGIN-BIRTH 


201 


Testament.  Bcce  Homo!  Only,  as  was  repeatedly 
found  both  by  friend  and  foe,  Jesus  could  not  be 
fitted  into  men’s  ordinary  idea  of  humanity.  The 
more  certainly  others  assumed  that  they  knew  all 
about  Him,  the  more  clearly  it  emerged  that  they 
did  not.  Anyhow,  again,  Jesus  is  the  great  cham¬ 
pion  of  marriage.  He,  indeed,  has  pitched  the 
standard  of  marriage  uncomfortably  high  for  the 
average  sensual  man.  He  puts  His  seal  to  marriage 
and  His  hands  of  blessing  on  the  heads  of  children. 

Does,  then,  His  birth  of  a  virgin  matter?  Cer¬ 
tainly  it  is  not  like  the  Resurrection,  in  the  sense 
that  it  is  not  that  without  which  Christianity  could 
never  have  been.  It  looks  as  though  St.  Paul  and 
St.  Peter  (if  St.  Mark’s  Gospel  is  his  story)  and 
perhaps  St.  John  knew  nothing  of  it.  It  is,  there¬ 
fore,  too  much  to  say  that  conviction  about  the 
birth  is  absolutely  necessary  for  a  Christian.  It  is 
too  much  to  say  that  we  believe  in  Christ  because 
He  was  virgin-born. 

But  if  the  truth  of  the  whole  fact  of  Christ  is 
what  we  have  stated  at  the  outset  of  this  chapter, 
namely,  the  coming  forth  of  God  Himself,  then  the 
Virgin-Birth  is  of  a  piece  with  the  rest.  It  is  of  a 
piece  with  what  we  called,  in  an  earlier  chapter,  the 
new-creative  act  of  God.  It  is  in  harmony  with  the 
fact  that  Christ  is  inexplicable  as  being  “  from 
below.”  It  fits  with  the  truth  that,  in  the  whole 
drama  of  Jesus,  the  initiative,  the  action  was  God’s. 
Say  what  others  may,  the  writer  cannot  agree  that 
there  is  no  meaning  or  value  in  the  Virgin-Birth 
and  that  it  may  without  loss  be  dropped  out.  God 


202  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


made  a  new  humanity  in  that  which  He  wrought 
in  Christ.  Men,  whom  the  confiding  appeal  of 
Jesus  displayed  as  held  captive  by  their  own  in¬ 
firmities,  were  born  again  into  a  new  life.  God,  in 
a  word,  made  a  new  start  for  the  race. 

There  was  desperate  need  of  a  new  start,  not 
least  in  the  vital  matters  of  sex.  Is  there  any 
respect  in  which  men  stand  more  in  need  of  deliv¬ 
erance  from  engrained  frailties  than  as  regard  sex? 
Is  there  any  function  of  human  nature  in  which 
men  have  more  disastrously  fallen  from  their 
birthright — have  more  pathetically  abused  gifts 
good  in  themselves — than  the  function  of  sex? 
There  has  been  much  easy  talk  to  the  contrary 
about  all  this.  Some  of  it,  to  be  rather  cruelly 
frank,  has  come  from  spinsters  in  the  “  women’s 
movement.”  But  most  men  know  in  their  hearts 
that  there  is  need  of  penitence  as  regards  any 
man’s  love  for  a  true  woman.  If  so  that  is  a  pow¬ 
erful  witness  to  the  need  of  a  new  creation.  It 
witnesses  to  the  fact  that  sexual  intercourse  has 
been  pervaded  by  human  weakness. 

Something,  therefore,  very  vital  is  lost  if  the 
initiative  in  the  birth  of  Jesus  was  but  a  husband’s 
love  for  his  wife.  Something  precious  is  retained 
if  the  initiative  was  from  God.  And  that  is  the 
meaning  and  value  of  the  Virgin-Birth.  The 
meaning  is — to  use  words  of  St.  John,  which  do 
not  certainly  refer  to  the  matter — that  Christ  was 
born  “  not  of  the  will  of  the  flesh,  nor  of  the  will 
of  man,  but  of  God.” 

We  will  not  enter  again  upon  the  question  of  the 


THE  VIRGIN-BIRTH 


203 


supernatural.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  there  is  no 
reasonableness  in  a  dogmatic  rejection  of  it. 

But  there  is  the  question  of  evidence.  We  will 
not  go  into  the  suggestion,  which  was  early  made, 
that  if  the  story  of  the  Virgin-Birth  is  untrue, 
there  is  more  evidence  for  Jesus  being  born  out  of 
wedlock  than  for  His  being  the  son  of  Joseph. 
But  we  will  come  to  the  main  issue,  and  that  is  the 
trustworthiness  of  St.  Luke.  It  makes  a  very  great 
wound  in  the  witness  of  the  New  Testament  if  St. 
Luke’s  story  is  untrue.  For  he  is  explicit  in  car¬ 
rying  his  narrative  back  to  those  “  who'  from  the 
beginning  were  eyewitnesses  ”  (Luke  i:l-4)  :  and 
he  comes  forward,  at  a  time  when  many  others 
were  also  drawing  up  narratives,  to  “  trace  the 
course  of  all  things  accurately  from  the  first.”  The 
dominant  note  in  the  minds  which  produced  the 
New  Testament  writings  is  that  of  “  witness.” 
For  in  following  Jesus  men  had  found  that  their 
own  ideas  or  inventions  were  exhausted  and,  at  the 
climax  of  the  ministry,  were  proved  wholly  in¬ 
adequate.  Their  part  therefore  in  preaching  the 
truth,  which  had  been  acted  out  without  their  co¬ 
operation,  was  to  be  faithful  witnesses.  That  was 
the  attitude  into  which  the  whole  dramatic  action 
of  the  ministry  had  wrought  or  moulded  them. 
St.  Luke  sounds  emphatically  the  note  of  witness. 
It  cuts  a  great  hole  into  the  trustworthiness  of  the 
New  Testament,  to  say  that  St.  Luke,  in  setting 
himself  to  trace  the  course  of  what  happened,  al¬ 
lowed  legend  or  pious  fancy  to  adulterate  the  wit¬ 
ness  of  others.  We  know  (better,  perhaps,  to-day 


204  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


than  ever  before)  into  what  a  hive  of  human  specu¬ 
lation  and  theory,  both  Jewish  and  Greek,  the  wit¬ 
nessing  Church  went,  when  it  launched  out  into  the 
world.  The  existence  of  the  New  Testament  is 
evidence  of  the  strong,  clear-eyed  fashion  in  which 
a  witness  was  maintained  to  what  was  true  and 
really  happened.  And  it  is  also  fair  to  say  that,  of 
all  authors  in  the  New  Testament,  none  has  come 
more  honourably  through  the  jealous  fire  of  mod¬ 
ern  criticism  than  St.  Luke. 

After  all,  whence  did  he  get  the  story?  Was  it 
not  from  the  Mother?  It  was  one  of  the  things 
which  Mary  “  pondered  in  her  heart  ”  ?  We  can¬ 
not  be  dead  certain,  but  we  can  be  certain  enough 
to  be  full,  year  by  year,  of  Christmas  joy. 


XXXI 

THE  HOLY  TRINITY 


HRISTIANITY  is  a  Gospel — a  good  news 


■because  it  is  about  God.  That,  as  we 


have  seen,  sprang  from  the  essential  char¬ 
acter  of  the  historical  drama  into  which  the  dis¬ 
ciples  were  brought  as  they  followed  Jesus.  He 
brought  to  a  head  the  long  travail  of  the  one  people, 
itself  representative  of  other  peoples,  which  had 
most  persistently  “  felt  after  God,  if  haply  they 
might  find  Him.”  He  led  them  to  the  supreme 
religious  crisis  in  the  history  of  the  whole  human 
race,  when  one  reality  was  at  issue — God.  That 
issue  did  not  go>  by  default.  The  outcome  of  the 
crisis  was  a  Gospel  of  God.  There  is  therefore  a 
Christian  doctrine  of  God.  It  is  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity,  which  is  to<  the  effect  that  the  unity  of 
the  Godhead  is  not  bare  and  single,  as  though  God 
were  the  Great  Alone:  but  that  there  are  within 
the  Unity  of  the  Godhead  relationships  which  we 
cannot  call  anything  less  than  personal — relation¬ 
ships  between  the  Father,  the  Son  and  the  Holy 
Spirit. 

We  must  not  run  away  from  this  great  subject, 
however  its  excess  over  the  capacity  of  human 
thought  may  tempt  us  to  do  so. 

The  doctrine,  undoubtedly,  dwells  in  an  un¬ 
happy  association  of  ideas  in  most  men’s  minds. 


205 


206  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


One  word  in  the  Athanasian  Creed  has  stuck  to 
their  minds,  and  it  colours  their  thought  of  the  rest 
— it  is  the  word  “  incomprehensible.”  And  more 
than  this,  their  thought  has  been  darkened  and  em¬ 
bittered  by  resentment  at  the  damnatory  introduc¬ 
tion  to  the  Creed.  They  angrily  repudiate  the  use, 
as  a  test  of  salvation,  of  what  seems  to  be  highly 
speculative  if  not  unintelligible  doctrine. 

The  writer  cannot  but  express  sympathy  with 
such  resentment.  He  does  not  attempt  to  defend 
the  making  of  intellectual  assent  to  doctrinal 
formulae  a  test  of  salvation.  For  Christ  undoubt¬ 
edly  made  life  rather  than  belief  the  test  of  human 
destiny.  That  is  one  of  the  things  which  lends 
such  formidable  urgency  to  His  words  and  work. 

But  grant  what  has  been  said  and  there  remains 
this,  that  the  truth,  which  the  Church  maintained 
so  fiercely  in  the  face  of  deadly  attacks,  is  not  a 
human  speculation.  It  is  the  interpretation  of  that 
which  was  not  made  by  man  but  was  wrought  out 
by  God  alone.  The  Church  has  been  right  to  wit¬ 
ness  to  this.  She  is  the  trustee  of  truth  about 
which  she  cannot,  despite  all  solicitations,  be  just 
vaguely  tolerant  and  easy-going.  She  has  been 
right  to  insist,  in  view  of  the  inveterate  irrational¬ 
ity  and  indolence  of  thought  with  which  the  world 
is  so  easily  content  in  things  religious,  that  there 
is  a  positive  truth  of  God  which  the  mind  can  ap¬ 
prehend,  even  though  only  in  part:  that  men  can 
think  rightly  about  God,  and  that  it  matters  vitally 
whether  they  do  so  or  not.  A  world,  laid  well-nigh 
in  ruins  by  lies  about  God,  should  be  willing  to 


THE  HOLY  TRINITY 


207 


learn  that  no  greater  practical  force  exists  in  human 
affairs  than  the  ideas — whether  true  or  false — of 
God,  which  men  have  in  their  minds. 

There  is  this  also  to  be  said.  The  charge  that 
Trinitarian  doctrine  is  beyond  comprehension  is 
often  made  on  the  assumption  that,  by  contrast 
with  it,  there  is  some  simple  and  reasonable  Uni¬ 
tarian  truth  of  God.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that 
the  truth  of  the  Oneness  of  God,  or  at  most  the 
truth  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  is  securely  in  the 
possession  “  of  all  good  men  ” :  that  such  truth 
stands  solidly  on  its  own  base  and  is  in  no  need  of 
any  dogmatic  support.  Yet  no  assumption  is  less 
borne  out  either  by  history  or  by  present  experi¬ 
ence.  We  will  only  speak  of  the  latter. 

As  we  have  seen,  it  is  precisely  belief  in  God — 
theism — which  is  hard  hit  to-day  and  has  been  hard 
hit  for  many  a  day.  It  is  hard  hit  by  what  we 
have  called  the  riddle  of  the  universe — the  im¬ 
mense  array  of  dark  and  painful  facts,  both  within 
and  without  men,  which  seem  irreconcilable  with 
the  goodness,  still  more  with  the  love  of  God. 
Once  men  are  sensitive  to  these  facts  their  theism 
is  troubled.  That  has  ever  been  so.  It  is  so  to-day. 
Great  questions  of  reconciliation  become  urgent: 
how  to  reconcile  God’s  power  and  His  love;  how  to 
reconcile  His  transcendence  (His  being  above  the 
world,  immune  from  the  miseries  of  the  world) 
and  His  immanence  (His  presence  in  the  world, 
immersed  in  so  much  that  is  evil  in  the  world)  ; 
how  to  reconcile  God  and  sinful  men :  how  to  recon¬ 
cile  the  ideal  and  the  actual.  And  so  on.  It  is  true 


208  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


to  say  that  philosophy  by  itself  is  powerless  to  effect 
the  necessary  reconciliations :  the  irreconcilable 
facts  tear  holes  in  its  successive  systems. 

But  the  Gospel  is  that  reconciliation  was  made 
by  God  Himself,  in  that  which  He  did  and  does  in 
Christ.  And  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  declares 
that  the  nature  of  God  is  such  as  makes  this  recon¬ 
ciliation  possible.  It  says  that  the  Father  is  not 
only  above  the  world,  but  (in  His  Son)  is  within 
and  identified  with  the  world’s  painful  processes; 
is  not  only  over-against  man,  but  (in  the  Spirit)  is 
travailing  in  the  human  heart.  The  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  sets  the  Cross  at  is  were  in  the  heart  of 
God.  Let  anyone  try  to  say  anything  on  a  Good 
Friday  about  the  infinitely  tragic  suffering  and 
death  of  Jesus,  and  he  will  be  brought  to  see  what 
at  any  rate  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is  about. 
A  bare  theism — any  candid  Unitarian  conception 
of  God — is  confounded  by  that  representative  trag¬ 
edy  and  crime.  For  the  Cross,  apart  from  the 
truth  of  the  Trinity,  is  eloquent  of  nothing  but  the 
glory — and  the  pathos — of  human  heroism.  It  is 
only  the  word  of  God  to  a  world  in  which  crucifix¬ 
ion  is  common,  if  it  is  true  that  it  is  God  Himself 
who  is  on  the  Cross. 

No'  speculation  of  man  produced  this  almost  in¬ 
credible  truth.  It  had  not  entered  into  the  mind  of 
man  so  to  think  of  God.  The  truth  took  hold  of 
men’s  minds  through  what  God  did  in  Christ.  The 
assertion  of  threefoldness  in  the  nature  of  God 
was  not  a  quasi-mathematical  fancy.  It  sprang 
from  the  succession  of  distinct  moments  or  com- 


THE  HOLY  TRINITY 


209 


ings  in  the  Divine  action.  There  was  the  sending 
of  the  Son  by  the  Father  :  that  sending  by  which 
the  reality  of  the  Father’s  love  was  revealed  even 
in  and  unto  the  death  upon  the  Cross.  There  was 
the  sending  of  the  Holy  Spirit :  that  sending  by 
which  the  Son,  who  had  given  Himself  to  the  death 
and  thus  had  brought  men  under  judgment,  came 
to  live  within  them  in  recreative  power.  All  was 
the  action  of  God.  To  think  anything  else  would 
have  been  intolerable  to  Jews  (as  were  the  Apos¬ 
tles),  into  whose  hearts  a  jealousy  for  monotheism 
(belief  in  one  God)  had  been  burnt  as  by  fire.  It 
was  God  come  in  Christ:  God  come  in  the  Spirit. 
And  yet  not  three  Gods,  but  one  God.  It  was  not 
God,  and  then  a  man  (Jesus)  and  then  an  in¬ 
fluence  (the  Spirit).  But  it  was  God  acting  in  His 
Son,  and  God  acting  in  the  Spirit.  God  first,  midst 
and  last. 

Historical  event,  then,  lies  at  the  heart  of  the 
truth  of  the  Trinity.  No  man  wove  it,  in  spider- 
like  fashion,  out  of  his  inner  consciousness.  The 
witness  of  the  New  Testament  is  absolute  that  the 
truth  of  God  was  not  reached  by  man  but  came  and 
reached  man.  And  the  Church  in  the  face  of  a 
multitude  of  speculations,  which  cut  as  it  were  at 
her  main  nerve,  maintained  the  witness.  “  It  was 
God  who  came,”  she  said,  “  not  another  man,  not  a 
demi-god.  It  was  God  of  God,  and  not  another.” 

The  upshot  is  a  doctrine  which  makes  the  nature 
of  God  as  personal  far  more  intelligible  than  any 
doctrine  which  conceives  of  Him  as  merely  one  or 
single  or  solitary.  For  personality,  as  we  know  it 


210  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


on  the  human  plane,  is  never  merely  individual, 
still  less  solitary.  It  never  exists,  it  is  never  ex¬ 
pressed,  except  in  relationship  with  others.  The 
individual  person  is  always  socially  representative. 
Further,  it  is  revealed  in  action.  A  man’s  person¬ 
ality  is  revealed  in  what  he  does.  It  is  most  re¬ 
vealed  in  outgoing  sacrificial  action.  A  man  is 
never  so  much  his  real  self  as  when  he  gives  him¬ 
self  away  in  self-sacrificing  love.  The  boy  flinging 
himself  “  over  the  top  ”  at  the  front  is  more  of  a 
person  than  the  man  saving  himself  at  the  base. 
He  is  more  of  a  clue  to  the  nature  of  things  than 
the  other.  Further,  human  personality  is  not  a 
centre  of  bare  identity  like  a  pin-point.  There  is 
distinction  or  relationship  within  the  unity  of  per¬ 
sonality.  This  comes  out  in  self-consciousness,  I 
am  conscious  of  myself  and  can  send  myself  hither 
and  thither.  I  can  give  myself. 

All  this,  that  is  true  of  man  as  made  in  the 
image  of  God,  is  wonderfully  corrobated  by  the 
Christian  revelation.  God  as  personal  is  known  in 
His  relationship  to  others.  From  out  of  the  dim 
past  comes  a  word  telling  of  friendship  between 
God  and  Abraham.  For  though  the  Jew  had  not 
the  word  personality,  he  knew  the  thing.  His  na¬ 
tional  story  was  the  experience  of  relationship  with 
Another,  an  experience  surviving  and  expanding 
through  many  vicissitudes.  To  the  Jew,  too,  the 
Other  was  known  in  action.  He  was  at  work  in 
history.  So  in  the  fullness  of  the  times  God  was 
revealed  in  all-fulfilling  action,  in  the  giving  of 
Himself  in  love  which  suffers  all  things  for  the  sake 


THE  HOLY  TRINITY 


211 


of  the  beloved.  He  did  not  send  someone  else.  He 
came,  He  gave  Himself.  That  very  essence  of  the 
Good  News  is  utterly  irreconcilable  with  any 
merely  Unitarian  conception  of  God.  But  it  is  pos¬ 
sible  if  He  is  not  a  bare  unity  or  single  centre  of 
consciousness;  if  there  is  relationship  within  the 
unity  of  His  nature;  if — in  a  word — in  Himself 
He  is  love.  And  what  He  is  in  Himself  was  made 
known  in  self-revealing  action.  What  He  is  eter¬ 
nally  was  made  known  in  time. 

But,  let  it  be  repeated,  it  was  the  action  in  time 
which  unveiled  the  eternal.  No  man  conceived  a 
theory  of  triune  personality  and  imposed  it  upon 
the  fact  of  Christ.  It  was  the  other  way  about. 
The  fact  of  Christ  went  beyond  all  theories  and 
speculations.  The  triune  action  was  other  than  any 
human  anticipation.  God  wrought  out  the  truth  of 
Himself  in  action.  On  that  truth  so  given  human 
thought  ponders  and  draws  thence  a  whole  phi¬ 
losophy  of  existence.  Thus  did  the  Church  ponder 
on  the  original  witness  given  to  what  God  had  done 
in  Christ.  Thus  did  she  draw  out  the  doctrine  of 
the  Holy  Trinity. 


XXXII 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  LIFE:  THE  KINGDOM 

OF  GOD 

WE  have  considered  some  of  the  great  ele¬ 
ments  of  the  Christian  faith.  There  re¬ 
mains  that  in  the  last  pages  of  this  book 
we  should  discuss  further  the  application  of  that 
faith  to  life.  At  the  centre  of  the  Gospel  is  the 
Saviour  of  the  world.  The  world,  on  the  other 
hand,  needs  salvation.  We  need  not  labour  that 
point  again.  Our  starting-place  was  the  whole 
world’s  need.  “  Human  society,”  in  the  words  of 
Lord  Grey,  “  has  received  an  ultimatum.” 

Is  it  possible  to  indicate  a  little  more  plainly  how 
the  Gospel  can  help  the  world  in  its  need  ? 

In  asking  this  question  we  are  really  asking 
another,  namely,  What  is  the  Kingdom  of  God? 
The  reference  of  much  of  Christ’s  teaching  about 
the  Kingdom  of  God  was  the  entangling  business 
of  ordinary  life.  It  was  in  regard  to  the  most 
prosaic  and  necessary  needs  of  daily  existence — 
food,  clothing  and  the  like — that  He  said  with 
sharpest  decisiveness :  “  Seek  ye  first  the  kingdom 
of  God  and  His  righteousness,  and  all  these  things 
shall  be  added  unto  you.” 

But  what  is  the  Kingdom  of  God?  What  is  it 
and  where  is  it?  Is  it  the  Church?  Or  is  it  a 
renovated  and  transformed  secular  world-order? 


212 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  LIFE 


213 


Is  it,  for  instance,  the  League  of  Nations  in  being? 
Is  it  here  on  earth  amid  earth’s  mortal  conditions  ? 
Or  is  it  only  in  the  beyond?  Is  it  only  “King¬ 
dom  come  ”  ? 

What  did  Christ  mean  by  it?  Was  it  to  Him 
only  a  future  state?  Was  it  linked  in  His  mind 
with  the  expectation  that  this  present  order  of 
things  was  about  to  end  ? 

Does  it  take  shape  in  the  external  world  ?  Or  is 
it  only  “  within  you  ”  ?  Why  does  mention  of  the 
Kingdom  nearly  die  away  in  the  course  of  the  New 
Testament?  The  teaching  of  Jesus  in  the  Gospels 
is  full  of  it.  Why  is  there  but  little  mention  of  it 
in  the  Epistles  ?  Why  are  there  two  names  for  it — 
the  Kingdom  of  God  and  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  ? 

These  are  real  questions.  To  some  of  them  we 
have  given  incidental  answers  in  previous  chapters. 
No  subject  to-day  needs  more  thoroughgoing  dis¬ 
cussion.  Space  at  the  end  of  this  book  forbids  such 
discussion.  But  this  at  any  rate  we  will  say,  in 
passing,  that  when  questions  are  put  in  the  form  of 
Either-Or,  the  right  answer  is  commonly — Both. 
There  are  also  a  few  things  which  can  be  said  even 
in  a  short  space. 

Probably  some  of  the  difficulties  surrounding  the 
subject  arise  from  our  disposition  to  think  too 
much  of  the  meaning  of  the  word  “  Kingdom,” 
and  too  little  of  the  words  “  of  God.”  We  begin 
to  frame  ideas  of  a  scheme,  system,  order  of 
things.  We  feel  after  some  “  -ism.”  And  we  are, 
the  while,  suspicious  of  “  -isms.” 

Let  us  start  with  “  of  God.”  The  Kingdom  of 


214  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


God  cannot  be  less  than  the  final  goal  of  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  God  in  the  whole  creation.  The  very  fact 
that  it  is  so  all-inclusive  is  the  reason  why  it  is  so 
hard  to  grasp  or  to  define.  It  is  “  of  God.”  As 
such,  therefore,  it  must  not  be  thought  of  in  other 
terms  than  those  of  personal  reality  or  personal 
relationships.  It  is  more  than  any  external  organi¬ 
sation.  More  than  any  “  -ism  ”  or  system.  It  is 
beyond  reduction  to  programme  or  exhaustion  by 
“  schedule.”  It  is  not  a  result  attained  just  by 
human  endeavour  :  nor  a  burden  propped  upon 
weary  human  shoulders.  Rather  it  is  “  of  God.” 
It  is  the  personal  reality  of  God,  given  by  God  and 
received  by  persons.  It  is  God  arriving,  welcomed, 
possessed  by  men. 

And  it  is  already  here.  Whatever  Jesus  said 
about  it,  or  others  thought  He  said,  He  established 
it.  It  arrived  in  Him.  It  was  quite  other  than  any 
one  expected.  Clearly  the  word  Kingdom  set  up 
misleading  associations  in  the  minds  of  the  dis¬ 
ciples.  It  is  apt  to  do  so  to  this  day.  The  word  is 
saturated  with  associations  of  mere  power.  But 
the  Kingdom  of  God  is  the  reign  of  the  power  of 
love.  It  is  the  reign  of  the  love  of  God.  And  that 
reign  was  established,  all  defiance  and  opposition 
to  the  contrary,  at  Calvary.  A  hymn  (as  usual) 
misleads  by  asking :  “  Thy  Kingdom  come,  O  Lord, 
Thy  rule,  O  Christ,  begin.”  The  Kingdom  has 
come,  the  rule  has  begun.  The  Kingdom  was 
manifested  in  victorious  supremacy  in  the  Cross. 
It  was  planted  at  the  depth  of  honest  and  true 
hearts.  Whatever  the  final  goal  of  God’s  purpose 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  LIFE 


215 


in  history  may  turn  out  to  be,  it  will  be  the  com¬ 
pletion  of  that  which  He  wrought  out  in  Christ, 
even  to  the  death  upon  the  Cross.  It  will  be  the 
outcome  of  the  truth,  indelibly  engraven  on  human 
hearts,  that  God  is  love. 

Further,  as  it  is  “  of  God  ”  it  is  more  than  ideal¬ 
ism.  “  I  get  a  kind  of  nausea,  when  faced  by 
idealism/’  said  a  young  journalist  of  late.  Life 
again  and  again  seems  intractable  to  idealism.  The 
futility  of  pious  intentions  and  good  resolutions 
clings  to  idealism.  “  Real-politik  ”  seems  to  go 
through  it  like  paper.  It  seems  related  to  life  as  a 
rainbow  to  a  storm.  But  the  Kingdom  is  “  of 
God.”  It  is  that  which  is.  It  is  already  and  for 
ever  in  heaven.  Already,  in  the  unseen,  the  Fath¬ 
er’s  Name  is  hallowed,  His  Kingdom  has  come,  His 
will  is  done.  As  in  heaven,  therefore  so  on  earth. 
The  already  real  is  to  be  realised,  reproduced  on 
earth.  Heaven  comes  down  to  earth,  invades  and 
masters  it.  Already,  therefore,  amid  the  almost 
hopeless  thick  of  history,  the  end  is  sure.  Already 
though  the  ploughshare  sticks  in  the  stubborn  clay 
of  things,  the  harvest  is  certain.  The  Kingdom  is 
real-politik ,  for  it  is  the  nature  of  things.  It  is 
the  reality  of  what  God  is  and  intends.  And  it 
is  that  reality  vindicated  and  proved  triumphant  on 
earth.  For  established  in  the  Cross — where  all 
that  beggars  human  optimism  seemed  victorious — 
it  has  taken  the  measure  of  all  that  breeds  disillu¬ 
sionment  in  men.  It  is,  in  virtue  of  its  source  and 
lodgment  at  the  depths  of  things,  proof  against 
the  “  moth  and  the  rust.”  It  is  harder  than  the 


216  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


rock  of  human  apathy  and  ignorance :  tougher  than 
the  whole  entanglement  of  human  sin.  Amid 
changes  it  stands ;  amid  hopelessness  it  arrives ; 
over  futility  and  despair  it  prevails.  For  it  is  of 
God  in  Christ. 

Its  organ  and  instrument  is  character.  Its 
means  to  leaven  the  whole  stuff  of  life  is  conse¬ 
crated  lives.  And  those  lives  are  not  isolated  units, 
mere  individuals,  for  a  mere  individual  is  but  an 
abstraction,  a  figment  of  human  thought.  But  the 
lives  being  individual  are  also,  to  their  core,  social ; 
they  are  cells  in  an  organism,  elements  in  a  fellow¬ 
ship,  members  of  a  family,  limbs  of  a  body.  For 
the  Church  is  the  leaven,  howsoever  its  record  may 
belie  the  fact.  The  Church  is  the  organ  of  the 
Kingdom.  It  is,  in  the  divine  intention,  the  Body 
of  which  the  creative  and  directing  Head  is  Christ. 
Through  it  He  completes  the  work  already  victori¬ 
ously  begun.  Alive  in  the  lives  of  its  members  He 
goes  out  to  subdue  the  whole  world  to  the  rule  of 
the  Father’s  love.  He  works  until  the  “  whole  is 
leavened,”  until  the  kingdoms  of  this  world  are 
His  Kingdom. 

The  process  is  radical,  for  it  goes  to  the  root  of 
all  human  maladies,  namely,  of  the  human  heart. 
It  changes  the  heart,  let  all  the  cynics  in  smoking- 
rooms  say  what  they  may.  If  Christ  cannot  change 
human  nature  from  the  heart  outwards,  He  is  in¬ 
deed  a  pretender  to  the  Kingdom,  of  God.  If  He 
cannot  make  character,  He  can  make  nothing.  If 
He  cannot  pierce  “  even  to  the  dividing  of  soul  and 
spirit,  of  both  joints  and  marrow,”  and  is  not 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  LIFE 


217 


“  quick  to  discern  the  thoughts  and  intents  of  the 
heart/'  He  is  not  the  Word  of  God. 

But  He  can  and  does,  and  it  is  for  that  final 
reason  that  He  is  the  Saviour  of  the  world.  For 
nothing  external  to  the  hearts  of  men — those  in¬ 
most  factories  and  laboratories  of  good  and  evil — 
can  save  the  world.  There  is  light  comedy  and 
grim  tragedy  in  the  external  remedies — policies, 
legislations,  nostrums — with  which  men  would 
plaster  over  the  wounds  of  a  world  sick  to  its  core, 
that  is  sick  at  heart.  There  is  a  flood  of  shallow 
talk,  slopping  through  contemporary  literature, 
which  tells  of  some  simple  salvation  to  be  found  in 
Jesus  as  a  mere  ethical  teacher,  shorn  of  all  redeem¬ 
ing  power,  abstracted  from  all  affirmation  about 
the  nature  of  reality.  There  is — so  the  talk  goes — 
an  undogmatic  essence,  compounded  of  ideals  and 
good  intentions,  which  is  to  save  the  world.  And 
all  the  while  the  world,  individually  and  socially,  is 
in  slavery — to  self.  Men  in  their  multitudes  are 
bound  in  bondage  to  their  appetites.  Within  them, 
as  in  an  inner  shrine,  an  idol  is  enthroned.  It  is 
the  idol  of  self.  And  the  outcome  is  a  world  rav¬ 
aged  and  threatened  by  ruin.  A  war,  which  struck 
at  the  vitals  of  human  society,  sprang  out  of  the 
lusts  and  avarice  which  reign  within  the  hearts  of 
men.  Other  worse  wars  will  spring  likewise  unless 
that  idol  be  struck  down  and  society  be  turned  to 
God ;  unless  He  is  in  the  heart  and  men  be  changed 
in  heart  because  changed  in  motive;  unless  He 
saves  them  who  cannot  save  themselves. 

For  the  virtue  which  has  gone  out  of  the  world 


218  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


is  theological  virtue,  pace  all  the  modern  aversion 
to  theology  and  dogma.  The  saving  contribution 
of  Christianity  to  life — the  leaven  required — is 
theological  virtue.  Character,  that  is,  moulded  to 
the  core  by  Godwardness.  The  character  of  men 
who,  with  a  saving  unconsciousness,  bring  God 
with  them  because  their  hearts  are  wide  open  to  the 
light  of  what  He  is;  who  by  an  inmost  obedience, 
are  internally  free ;  who  are  conduits  of  the  loving- 
kindness  which  is  at  the  heart  of  things.  Their 
lives  are  the  leaven,  the  salt  and  the  light  of  the 
world.  They  embody  and  spread  the  virtue  of  the 
Beatitudes,  which  is,  in  all  its  elements,  theological 
— rootless  unless  rooted  in  God.  They  are  detached 
from  the  greedy  clutches  of  the  world,  for  they 
are  lifted  above  its  fever  in  the  detachment  of  lives 
hidden  with  God.  Yet  they  are  in  passionate  sym¬ 
pathy  with  others,  for  they  see  them  in  the  light  of 
what  they  are  to  God.  They  are  disinterested  and 
self-effacing,  for  they  are  turned  from  self  to  God. 
Yet  they  are  ardent  and  irrepressible  in  the  battle 
for  reform,  for  the  fire  of  the  intolerance  of  God 
over  evil  is  burning  in  their  hearts.  They  are  kind, 
because  He  is  love.  They  are  pure,  because  He 
draws  their  warring  impulses  into  the  harmony  of 
single-heartedness.  They  make  peace,  because  they 
are  at  peace  with  God.  They  are  at  war  in  the 
world,  because  it  is  at  variance  with  God. 

“  Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit,  blessed  are  they 
that  mourn,  that  are  meek,  that  hunger  and  thirst 
after  righteousness,  that  are  merciful,  that  are  pure 
in  heart,  that  are  peacemakers,  that  are  persecuted 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  LIFE 


219 


for  righteousness’  sake :  for  theirs  is  the  Kingdom 
of  God.” 

This  is  the  leaven  of  the  Kingdom.  This  is 
God’s  remedy  for  the  world’s  heart-disease. 

But  the  leavening  process  leaves — it  must  leave1 — 
the  secular  world  free.  That  is  a  vital  point.  The 
arena  of  the  Church’s  warfare  for  the  Kingdom  is 
the  whole  wide  world.  But  the  Church  must  re¬ 
frain  from  encroaching  on  the  rightful  autonomy 
of  the  world,  in  all  its  departments,  to  work  out  its 
own  salvation.  Theocracy,  that  is  the  domination 
of  life  by  the  ecclesiastical,  is  over  for  ever.  That 
self-appointed  critic  of  men  and  things — the  self- 
styled  Gentleman  with  the  Duster — complained  that 
the  leaders  of  the  Church  did  not  dictate  world- 
policy  at  Washington.  It  would  have  been  utterly 
impertinent  of  them  to  try  to  do  so.  It  would  have 
been  a  theocratic  invasion  of  the  rightful  autonomy 
of  politics.  It  would  have  been  the  fatal  assump¬ 
tion  by  ecclesiastical  powers  of  the  right  to  carry 
two  swords,  the  temporal  as  well  as  the  spiritual. 
That  Middle-Aged  assumption  has  gone  for  ever. 
The  whole  body  of  secular  life — its  thoughts,  its 
science,  its  economics,  its  art,  its  politics — has 
(since  the  Renaissance)  painfully  rewon  its  free¬ 
dom  from  ecclesiastical  dictation  and  control.  It 
will  never  surrender  it  again.  Nor  can  the  Church, 
no  matter  what  the  spiritual  need  of  the  secular 
world,  ever  rightly  ask  the  world  to  do  so.  For 
secular  life  has  its  own  rights  and  sanctions.  Its 
“  powers  are  ordained  of  God,”  and  “  there  is  no 
power  but  of  God.” 


220  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


Yet  the  Church  as  the  organ  of  the  Kingdom  is 
within  the  body  of  secular  life.  True,  it  has  no 
pattern  to  impose  on  the  secular  arts  and  sciences ; 
no  patent  remedy  for  statesmen  or  business  men  to 
swallow;  no  short  cut  to  Utopia  for  proffer.  Yet 
it  is  within  the  secular  process,  leavening  the  whole 
dough,  transfusing  new,’  life  in;to  the  cells  and 
arteries  of  the  body  politic,  penetrating  and  trans¬ 
forming  everything.  This  it  does  by  the  characters 
of  individuals  who,  as  members,  are  (the  unoffi¬ 
cial)  representatives  of  itself.  They  find  them¬ 
selves  relieved  of  no  fraction  of  the  normal  task 
of  mastering  the  secular  arts  of  life.  To  be  a 
Christian  is  no  qualification  as  such  for  any  pro¬ 
fession,  still  less  for  laying  down  the  law  to  other 
professionals,  any  more  than  prayer  is  a  means  by 
itself  of  passing  an  examination.  But  Christians 
who  are  brought,  by  due  qualification,  right  inside 
the  secular  sphere,  transform  it  from  within  by  the 
vehement  virus  of  lives  dominated  by  a  motive 
other  than  self.  They  themselves  make  all  the 
difference  by  the  judgment  that  they  bring  to  bear 
on  every  question.  They  re-direct  life’s  energies; 
alter  its  values ;  consolidate  it  by  honour  and  trust¬ 
worthiness;  sweeten  it  by  comradeship  and  kind-^ 
ness ;  enhearten  it  by  faith  and  hopefulness ;  cleanse 
it  by  humour  ;  glorify  it  by  sacrificial  public-spirit, 
Thus  they  apply  Christianity  to  life.  Thus  the 
Kingdom  of  God  is  extended.  Thus  heaven  in¬ 
vades  earth. 

Much  of  this  whole  process  is  (and  I  think  is 
meant  to  be)  unconscious.  It  is  more  than  argu- 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  LIFE 


221 


able  that  the  most  potent  instruments  for  social 
amelioration  in  history  have  not  been  those  who 
have  consciously  and  solemnly  bustled  about  to  set 
everything  and  everyone  right.  Rather  it  has  been 
those  who  have  brought  to  bear  on  the  world 
around  them  the  irresistible  infection  of  a  human¬ 
ity  singly  and  entirely  given  to  God.  And  it  is 
probable  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  not  so  effec¬ 
tively  spread  by  the  members  of  tired  and  tiring 
social  reformers  and  committee-mongers — with 
their  Lo,  here !  and  their  Lo,  there ! — as  by  those 
who,  more  deeply  and  humbly  immersed  in  life,  in¬ 
fluence  it  by  what  they  are.  In  other  words,  the 
world  is  most  deeply  affected  by  the  God-possessed. 

Yet  the  process  cannot  be  altogether  unconscious. 
For  everyone  in  lesser  or  greater  degree  has  to 
share  in  the  task  of  consciously  building  society  on 
some  foundation,  of  consciously  directing  its  re¬ 
sources  towards  an  end.  Build  man  must  willy- 
nilly.  On  what  shall  he  build?  Voyage  he  must, 
by  what  star  shall  he  sail?  Move  he  must,  but  in 
what  direction?  Faced,  as  all  are,  by  this  unescap- 
able  necessity,  the  Christian  in  the  world  con¬ 
tributes  to  the  mass  of  public  opinion,  the  guidance 
of  certain  main  principles,  the  dynamic  of  certain 
cardinal  motives.  For  he  is  entrusted  with  a  cer¬ 
tain  whole  philosophy  of  life,  certain  radical 
affirmations  about  the  reality  of  things.  Follow¬ 
ing  His  Lord  he  says :  “  Build  on  hate,  on  revenge, 
on  greed,  on  fear,  on  selfishness,  on  ignorance,  and 
you  will  build  on  sand,  and  down  your  building 
will  come.  For  you  build  on  that  which  is  at  dis- 


222  THE  RETURNING  TIDE  OF  FAITH 


cord  with  ultimate  reality.  But  build  on  love,  on 
forgiveness,  on  trustfulness,  on  humaneness,  on 
public-spirit,  on  truthfulness,  and  you  build  on  the 
rock :  for  you  build  on  the  reality  of  God  and  His 
moral  ordering  of  His  world.”  And  he  says  more. 
For  he  counters  all  the  cynical  weariness  and  half¬ 
heartedness  of  the  world,  dismayed  as  it  is  by  the 
incompleteness  and  complexity  of  its  labours,  by 
bidding  it  lift  its  eyes  to  the  end  beyond  the  tran¬ 
sient  present.  He  contributes  that  which  is,  as  we 
saw  at  the  outset,  the  supreme  need  of  men  and 
nations,  namely,  an  end  beyond  their  own  interests. 
For  he  brings  into  the  nearly  futile  details  of 
human  affairs  the  vision  of  their  fruition  in  the 
whole  purpose  of  God,  which  works  to  an  end.  He 
enheartens  others,  as  they  build  and  can  never 
finish,  with  the  faith  that  their  unfinished  build¬ 
ings  shall  nevertheless  be  built  into  the  Eternal 
City,  “  whose  Builder  and  Maker  is  God.” 


Printed  in  United  States  of  America. 


•> 


